PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF COMBATING CORRUPTION IN MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES

Abstract

Serious national efforts to combat corruption in our country hardly meet expectations of the population. Despite some positive achievements in this area, no fundamental shift has been observed in corruption-related crime. This is due to the predominance of the repressive-prohibitive restrictions among the anti-corruption means. Much less attention is paid to methods and measures of preventing corruption. In the author’s opinion, prevention of corruptive activities in the municipal authorities is of particular importance. These institutions are the closest to the population; their mission is to create conditions for ensuring the people’s vital rights and meeting their immediate essential needs. The subject of the research is the corruption crimes patterns, as well as activities to identify and prevent them. The aim of the research is to establish the corruption factors in the municipal authorities’ activity, to work out proposals on using the information about them to detect and prevent corruption crimes. Previous publications on this issue studied judicial and investigative practice, conducted sociological surveys of representatives of different social groups, identifying the most common corruption offenses and their essential features, but with no reference to the socio-economic, natural features of the territories or municipalities, regular staffing of municipal authorities, qualitative and quantitative specifics of their activities. While working on this article, based on the selective study of about 30 criminal cases on similar crimes, the author attempted to identify the above factors, to consider the possibility of using information about them to detect and prevent corruption crimes.