Member Article

Due to the active spread of coronavirus infection COVID-2019, the Russian authorities, at both the federal and regional levels, are taking significant measures to ensure the self-isolation of citizens. These measures include increasing the liability for violation of measures for preventing the spread of coronavirus infection, which caused adoption of a number of legislative acts.

1. A law has been adopted to toughen the criminal liability for violations of sanitary and epidemiological rules.

On April 1st, 2020, the Federal Law No. 100-FZ was adopted, which provides for the following changes:

Firstly, the criminal liability for violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules under Part 1 of Article 236 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation will be entailed not only for violation, causing a massive disease or poisoning of people through negligence, but also forcreating a threat of such consequences.

It means that for criminal prosecution under this article, an immediate outbreak of a mass disease, or poisoning, is no longer required: the threat of their onset is sufficient. Thus, in our opinion, the legislator intends to facilitate the criminal prosecution under the said article (which has not been used very often before, due to the difficulty in evidencing the outbreak of a mass disease as a result of violation of sanitary rules by a specific individual).

Secondly, the amount of a fine, which can be im-posed as a sanction for the said violation, has been increased (previously the maximum fine was 80,000.00 roubles and, according to the new ver-sion, the size of the fine is now from 500,000.00 to 700,000.00 roubles), as well as such a sanction of imprisonment for up to two years had also been introduced.

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