Cryptocurrency as a Subject of Bribery: Issues of Legal Regulation and Ways to Overcome Them

The subject of this article is scientific research dedicated to the criminal law, criminological, and procedural aspects of bribery, including its commission in the context of the digitalization of the economy and social relations. The object of this research is a comprehensive rethinking and systematization of scientific approaches to the analysis of corruption-related crimes in which digital currency serves as an object of criminal offense, with an emphasis on identifying legal, criminological, and organizational-practical problems that arise in the activities of investigative authorities, preliminary investigation, and operational units when detecting, documenting, and proving such acts. The research aims to reveal the specifics of using cryptocurrency as a subject of bribery, identify the most significant difficulties accompanying the investigation of corruption crimes involving digital financial assets, and develop scientifically substantiated proposals for improving the investigation system of digital forms of corruption. The methodology of the research includes normative legal acts of the Russian Federation as well as works by Russian scholars. The article employs both general scientific and special research methods. The novelty of the research lies in the author's comprehensive approach to the studied problem, the attempt to systematize the existing scientific experience of Russian scholars, and the formulation of recommendations on the researched issue. As a result of the research, the author arrives at the following conclusions: there is an objective necessity to legally define a clear and internally consistent legal status of cryptocurrency, as the absence of a uniform and conceptually structured approach to its legal nature within the legislation on digital financial assets objectively complicates the criminal law qualification of acts committed using it; effective counteraction to the investigated crimes is impossible without the parallel digitalization of anti-corruption mechanisms, which involves the development and implementation of modern information-analytical systems for monitoring operations with digital currency, identifying and documenting digital traces of criminal activity, and increasing the transparency of financial flows in the digital environment; an important direction for the development of anti-corruption measures in the context of the digital transformation of public space is prioritizing the enhancement of professional training for law enforcement officers engaged in operational-search and investigative activities.