نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 استادیار گروه حقوق جزا و جرمشناسی، دانشکدۀ علوم انسانی، واحد تهران شمال دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، تهران، ایران.
2 استادیار گروه فقه و حقوق اسلامی، دانشکدۀ ادبیات و علوم انسانی، دانشگاه ارومیه، ارومیه، ایران.
چکیده
اقتصاد یکی از ارکان مهم ثبات در نظام قانونی و اجتماعی هر جامعهای است و عدم وجود ثبات و سلامت در روابط اقتصادی سبب ایجاد مشکلات عدیده برای دولتها میگردد. ازاینرو، سیاستگذاران جنایی در سراسر جهان از جمله ایران، همواره در تلاش بودهاند تا با جرمهای اقتصادی بهعنوان پدیدۀ پیچیدهای که ساختارهای اقتصادی جامعه را تحتتأثیر قرار میدهد مقابله کنند. بااینحال، سیاست جنایی ایران درزمینههای گوناگون از جمله تعیین مفهوم، قلمرو و مصادیق قانونی جرم اقتصادی، احراز شرایط تحقق جرم، امکان صدور دستور موقت، صلاحیت مراجع و مرور زمان، با ابهام، چالش و ناکارآمدی مواجه است. این پژوهش با رویکردی توصیفی-تحلیلی و به روش تحقیق کتابخانهای انجام شده است. دادهها از طریق فیشبرداری از منابع معتبر گردآوری شدهاند و سپس مورد تجزیه و تحلیل کیفی قرار گرفتهاند. یافتههای پژوهش حاضر بر این امر دلالت دارد که قانونگذار باید ضمن بازنگری و تبیین مفهوم، مصادیق و قلمرو جرم اقتصادی در قانون مجازات اسلامی -بهعنوان محور اصلی سیاست جنایی تقنینی- ضابطهای روشن برای تشخیص جرم اقتصادی ارائه کرده و ابهامات قانونی را که موجب تشتت رویه قضایی شده است رفع کند. بر این اساس، با هدف کارآمدی سیاست جنایی تقنینی و قضایی پیشنهاداتی ارائه گردیده است.
کلیدواژهها
موضوعات
عنوان مقاله [English]
Challenges of Iran’s Legislative and Judicial Criminal Policy in Dealing with Economic Crimes
نویسندگان [English]
- zeynab Riazat 1
- Zahra Ahmadi Natour 2
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Humanities, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Jurisprudence and Law, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
چکیده [English]
Economic stability is a cornerstone of the legal and social order in any society, and its absence can lead to multifaceted problems for governments. Consequently, criminal policymakers worldwide, including in Iran, have consistently endeavored to combat economic crime as a complex phenomenon that disrupts a nation's economic structures. However, Iran's criminal policy faces significant ambiguity, challenges, and inefficiencies across various dimensions, including the definition, scope, and legal examples of economic crimes; establishing the conditions for the realization of the crime; the possibility of issuing interim orders; jurisdictional issues; and statutes of limitations. This research, conducted with a descriptive-analytical approach and library-based methodology, aims to identify and analyze these challenges within Iran's legislative and judicial criminal policy framework.
The study's findings indicate that the core of the inefficiency lies in the fundamental ambiguity at the legislative stage, particularly the lack of a clear, comprehensive, and consensus-based definition of "economic crime." This primary ambiguity creates a domino effect, cascading into and crippling the subsequent judicial process.
Conceptual and Exemplary Ambiguity in Legislative Criminal Policy: The Epicenter of the Crisis
The most significant challenge in Iran's legislative criminal policy is the absence of a precise, criteria-based legal definition for economic crime. The Iranian legislature has employed scattered and often contradictory laws, such as the Islamic Penal Code (2013), the Law on Combating Smuggling of Goods and Currency, and the Law on Punishment of Disruptors of the Economic System, without providing a unified conceptual framework. Key terms like "disruption of the country's economic system," "financial crime," and "economic corruption" are used interchangeably and vaguely.
This ambiguity is starkly evident in the Islamic Penal Code (2013). For instance:
• The Note of Article 36 lists specific crimes (e.g., embezzlement, bribery, smuggling, disruption of the economic system) requiring mandatory publication of verdicts, without explicitly labeling them "economic crimes."
• Article 47 prohibits the suspension of sentencing for "economic crimes where the subject of the crime exceeds 10 billion."
• Article 109(b) excludes from statutes of limitations "economic crimes, including fraud and the crimes subject to the Note of Article 36 of this law, observing the amount stipulated in that article."
This legislative approach has spawned a central ambiguity: Are the crimes listed in the Note of Article 36 inherently "economic," with the monetary thresholds in Articles 47 and 109 merely triggering specific punishments? Or is reaching a specific financial threshold (e.g., 100 billion for Article 109) the primary criterion for an offense to be considered an "economic crime"? This lack of clarity has led to divergent opinions among legal scholars and practitioners.
Furthermore, the list of examples in the law is neither comprehensive nor precise. Crucial and emerging economic offenses, such as capital market crimes, specific banking offenses, cyber-economic crimes, consumer rights violations, and large-scale environmental crimes, are omitted. This omission means that many destructive behaviors escape the stringent criminal policies reserved for economic crimes, such as the non-applicability of statutes of limitations.
Even within the listed examples, significant interpretive ambiguities persist regarding their scope, including their application to attempted crimes and complicity, the inclusion of various types of fraud, the scope of embezzlement, the ambiguities surrounding the crime of influence peddling, and the applicability of these laws to crimes committed by the armed forces.
Recent reform bills, such as the Bill on Combating Economic Crimes, have attempted to address these issues by removing vague phrases such as “and the like” and providing a more exhaustive list of examples. However, these efforts have failed to address the core problem, as they continue to rely on an exemplary approach rather than establishing a clear, overarching criterion.
2. The Cascading Judicial Consequences of Legislative Ambiguity
The ambiguities in legislation directly translate into serious operational challenges within the judicial system, leading to a fragmented and inconsistent criminal policy in practice.
2.1. Divergence of Judicial Opinions
The most prominent judicial challenge is the lack of consensus in judicial precedent regarding the conditions and elements of economic crimes, particularly the "intent of the perpetrator" and the interpretation of "disruption of the economic system." This is vividly illustrated in high-profile cases. For example, in the "Sultan of Coin" case, the court deemed proving the widespread disruptive result sufficient for a conviction of "corruption on earth," whereas in other similar cases, judges have required the "intent to counter the system" as a necessary condition. This inconsistency, stemming from the absence of a clear criterion to distinguish an "ordinary economic crime" from a "system-disrupting economic crime," leads to disparate sentencing and violates the principle of equality before the law.
2.2. Determination of Competent Authority
A major procedural challenge is confusion over jurisdictional competence between general criminal courts and the Revolutionary Courts. Disputes often arise regarding which court should hear cases of "disruption in the economic system," leading to protracted legal battles, preliminary rulings on lack of jurisdiction, and significant delays in proceedings, ultimately undermining the efficiency of justice.
2.3. Statutes of Limitations
The legislative ambiguity surrounding the definition and examples of economic crimes creates a two-fold problem regarding statutes of limitations under Article 109. First, there is uncertainty about whether the list is exhaustive. Second, the law fails to specify the critical time for assessing the financial threshold (e.g., one billion)—whether it is the time of the crime's commission or the time of its discovery. This is particularly problematic for crimes like fraud that may remain undetected for years. Judicial practice generally favors the time of commission, but the lack of explicit legal provision causes disputes.
2.4. Interim Criminal Orders
A significant procedural gap is the absence of an explicit legal mechanism for interim criminal orders in the Code of Criminal Procedure (2012). In economic crimes, where swift action is often needed to freeze assets, suspend suspicious bank payments, or prevent the dissipation of public funds, judges lack clear legal authority to issue such urgent orders. This forces them to resort to broad interpretations of existing, often inadequate, laws, resulting in judicial practice based on personal discretion rather than a standardized procedure. This legal vacuum allows perpetrators valuable time to hide or transfer assets, severely hampering effective enforcement.
2.5. Reliance on the Principle of Independence (in Banking Instruments)
A complex challenge arises at the intersection of economic crime and commercial law, specifically concerning banking instruments like letters of credit and bank guarantees. The principle of independence, which dictates that the bank's payment obligation is separate from the underlying contract, often clashes with the discovery of fraud. While this principle is crucial for commercial certainty, its rigid application—without explicit statutory recognition of "fraud" as an exception—can be exploited by economic criminals. Iranian judicial practice shows significant divergence in handling cases where fraudulent documents are presented, with some courts upholding the principle of independence and ordering payment, while others acknowledge the fraud and initiate criminal proceedings. This lack of a unified approach creates a dangerous legal loophole.
Conclusion and Recommendations
This study conclusively demonstrates that the inefficiency of Iran's criminal policy against economic crimes is not incidental but rooted in a fundamental cause: the lack of a transparent conceptual framework and a criteria-based definition at the legislative stage. The current approach, characterized by scattered, incomplete, and ambiguous exemplary lists, is itself a source of perpetual ambiguity that cascades into the judicial system, causing divergence in opinions, jurisdictional conflicts, and procedural inefficiencies.
The proposed solution is not piecemeal amendments but a paradigm shift toward a criteria-based criminal policy. The core recommendations are:
Formulate a Criteria-Based Definition: The legislature, in collaboration with experts, must prioritize establishing a comprehensive and reliable definition of economic crime based on the "protected value" (macro-economic order) and "diagnostic criteria" (e.g., scale of damage, extensiveness of effects, and context of commission).
Shift from an Exemplary to a Criteria-Based Approach: Instead of relying on exhaustive and perpetually incomplete lists, the law should provide a general framework based on a result-oriented criterion (e.g., "any act or omission that causes widespread disruption to the country's economic order"). Well-established examples can be provided illustratively, not exhaustively. This balances the principle of legality with the flexibility needed to combat new forms of crime.
Clarify Legal Ambiguities: The law must explicitly clarify the time for assessing the financial threshold, the scope of specific punishments, and formally recognize "clear fraud" as an exception to the principle of independence in commercial documents.
Reform Procedural Laws: The Code of Criminal Procedure must be amended to explicitly incorporate a mechanism for interim criminal orders, granting courts clear authority to take urgent preventive measures in economic crime cases.
Ultimately, the enactment of a comprehensive and coherent "Law on Combating Economic Crimes," grounded in precise conceptual foundations, is essential to overcoming the current fragmentation and establishing unity of procedure in judicial authorities. Only through such foundational reforms can Iran's criminal policy hope to effectively deter the scourge of economic crime and safeguard public assets.
کلیدواژهها [English]
- economic crime
- legislative criminal policy
- judicial criminal policy
- challenge of criminal policy
- pathology of criminal policy
- Islamic Penal Code of Iran
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