Topicalities in Coercive Measures Application Process to Legal Entities in Criminal Proceedings in the Republic of Latvia

Abstract

Under conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic and the military operations carried out by the Russian Federation in Ukraine, including the tension between the Western countries and the Russian Federation, the application of coercive means of influence to legal entities in criminal proceedings and peculiarities and problems of the criminal legal regulation related to their application, which hinder or even prevent, have become especially relevant to achieve the goal of the criminal process and lead it to a fair settlement of criminal legal relations. Criminal legal regulation regarding the application of coercive measures to legal entities is periodically improved in order to make the application of coercive measures more effective; however, shortcomings of the criminal legal framework still prevent effective action against legal entities by applying coercive measures to them in practice, as evidenced by the small number of initiated processes on the application of coercive measures for legal entities, which is also indicated by international organisations. The legislator has already started the process of improving the criminal legal framework; however, according to the author, there are a number of gaps in the criminal legal framework that hinder or even prevent application of means of coercive influence on legal entities in criminal proceedings. The purpose of the article is to research national and international criminal law regulation of legal entities criminal liability and identify and analyse problems of the criminal law regulation in the Republic of Latvia at various stages of the process of applying coercive measures to legal entities. General methods of scientific research and methods of legal interpretation have been used in the research.