Illegal Entrepreneurship: Theory Issues and Law Enforcement Problems

Introduction. Illegal entrepreneurship forms a significant sector of the shadow economy, which generally threatens the economic security of the State. In addition, illegal entrepreneurship is risky, and these risks are legal, since such entrepreneurial activity violates tax, civil, administrative and even criminal legislation. The intensity and repressiveness of criminal law measures applied against entrepreneurs should be adequate to the current state of existing public relations in order to ensure an acceptable balance between the freedom of market relations and the need to protect them from socially dangerous abuses. Purpose. The authors' aim is to give a criminal legal assessment of the current version of Article 171 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the practice of its application. Methodology. The formal dogmatic, statistical, and predictive methods were used. Results. The revealed trend of law enforcement practice in 2019-2023, the intensification of the criminal law fight against crimes under Article 171 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, cannot be extrapolated into the future, since in April 2024 the wording of the article was changed. The amendments, on the contrary, give reason to predict a decrease in the number of persons convicted in criminal cases of illegal entrepreneurship, since they exclude many controversial situations, removing them from the sphere of criminal law relations. This confirms the fact of the implementation of the policy of exclusive criminal liability of persons committing crimes in the field of economic activity. Conclusion. In order to optimize the balance between different types of legal response to illegal entrepreneurship, five proposals have been made to the disposition of Part two of Article 171 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation to improve the dispositions and sanctions of its separate crimes.