On the Problems of Counteracting Insurance Fraud

Abstract

Insurance fraud is a wide-spread crime in Russia. This type of publicly dangerous behavior is characterized by a variety of methods, forces and means. The specialists of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation conducted research aimed at identifying gaps in the normative legal regulation and other factors contributing to unlawful practices in the insurance market, and at developing countermeasures. The research made it possible to determine the most common ways of performing insurance fraud, to highlight modern trends of using cutting-edge technologies, a trend for the organized forms of committing criminal actions, and to identify key factors responsible for the insufficiently effective policy of counteracting insurance fraud. The latter include: problems of law enforcement, including those connected with the limited opportunities for the insurance companies to obtain necessary information; discrepancy between the time limit set for the government bodies to provide information at the request of an insurance company and the established time limit of making a decision regarding an insured event; factual lack of interest from the law enforcement bodies in either accepting documents for further examination and making a decision on the initiation of a criminal case, or in collecting the evidentiary basis through their own efforts; lenient legislation against insurance fraudsters, and an opportunity to terminate criminal prosecution at the stages of inquiry, investigation or court proceedings provided by it. The research results allowed the authors to formulate some suggestions on amendments to the legislation of the Russian Federation aimed at suppressing fraudulent actions at the insurance market, as well as other initiatives of organizational, institutional, information character.