MOSCOW, May 31 (Itar-Tass) —— Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika said prosecutors should be allowed to authorise business checks conducted by police.
“I think that time has come to consider the possibility of giving prosecutors the power of coordinating [business] checks conducted by law enforcement agencies,” Chaika said.
He stressed that now “they [law enforcement agencies] often act without control” and their inspections and checks raise the largest number of complaints from entrepreneurs.
A federal law adopted earlier this year aims to improve the system of governmental audit /supervision/ and municipal audit, as well as to consistently reduce administrative barriers in the field of entrepreneurship.
The law requires unscheduled field inspections by governmental audit /supervisory/ and municipal audit bodies to be approved by prosecutors with regard to all businesses without exception. An unscheduled field inspection of legal entities or individual entrepreneurs may be carried out on the grounds provided for in Clause 2 a, b, Article 10 (2) by governmental audit /supervisory/ and municipal audit bodies after obtaining an approval of the prosecutor's office at the place where such legal entities or individual entrepreneurs operate.
Before the law such an approval was required only for unscheduled inspections of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs falling into the category of small and medium-sized business, which puts big companies at a disadvantage.
The new version of the law will apply to all business entities without exception.
Last year, prosecutors rejected one in two requests for unscheduled business inspections of small and medium-size businesses.
“In the majority of cases, requests for inspections of business entities and entrepreneurs were made by subdivisions of Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare, the Emergencies Ministry, the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control (Rosselkhoznadzor), the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources, and the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Supervision, of which 33 to 62 percent were turned down,” the Prosecutor General's Office said.
“Prosecutors detected more than 27,600 violations of the law during inspections carried out by supervisory authorities. In order to remedy them, more than 6,500 determinations and over 1,400 warnings were issued, disciplinary penalties were initiated against 3,141 persons, and 13 criminal cases were opened,” it said.
Prosecutors found more than 12,200 unlawful regulatory acts issued by authorities of all levels in 2009.
The number of small and medium-size inspections has decreased almost 20 times in Russia after prosecutors were given new functions requiring their authorisation of such inspections.