A PERSON TO WHOM INFORMATION WAS ENTRUSTED OR BECAME KNOWN IN CONNECTION WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF OFFICIAL DUTIES, AS A SPECIAL SUBJECT OF THE CRIMINAL OFFENSE PROVIDED FOR IN ARTICLE 330 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of problematic aspects of the theory of criminal law and the practice of law enforcement in the part of the special subject of the transfer or collection of information, which constitutes official information, collected in the process of operative-search, counter-intelligence activities, in the field of defense of the country, which is the person to whom the relevant information was trusted or became known in connection with the performance of official duties. In particular, within the framework of the study, a number of compositions of criminal offenses containing the same or similar construction for the designation of a special subject were analyzed, and their common and distinctive features were revealed. In addition, considerable attention is paid to the distinction between concepts that are close in meaning, such as “information that was entrusted to a person” and “information that became known to a person”; “official duties” and “professional duties” etc. Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of the concept of “official duties” from the point of view of criminal law and its relationship with the concept of “official person”, the positions of representatives of the science of criminal law, who interpret the relationship of these concepts in different ways, are given. A conclusion is drawn, that in the sense of Article 330 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, “a person to whom information was entrusted or became known in connection with the performance of official duties” does not necessarily have to be an official in the sense of Article 18 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which is also confirmed by judicial practice. Based on the conducted research, the author established the fact that the category “a person to whom information was entrusted or became known in connection with the performance of official duties”, used in the current version of Article 330 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, is too imprecise and leaves the circle of such subjects is too broad, in connection with which it supports those researchers who propose to abandon this construction as a mandatory element of the composition of the researched criminal offense.