Financial Assets in Digital Form and How They Influence Classification of Crime

Abstract

The approval of new legislative acts regulating the financial assets in digital form,including digital rights, digital currencies and the digital ruble, gives grounds forrethinking their legal status and influence on the sphere of criminal law enforcement.The purpose of the study is to identify the legal nature of financial assets in digitalform, taking into account the current state of legal regulation of their turnover, toassess the existing approaches and develop recommendations for the qualificationof crimes in which the subject or means of committing them are digital rights, digitalcurrency, digital ruble or electronic cash. From these perspective are considered theissues of qualification of crimes against property, drug crimes, corruption crimes,laundering of money or other property acquired by criminal means, bankruptcrimes, malicious evasion of repayment of accounts payable, concealment of fundsor property from the collection of taxes, fees, insurance premiums. The generalconclusion based on the results of the study is that financial assets in digital form,representing property rights, must be considered as a sign of these crimes, exceptwhen their actual involvement is beyond the scope of the crime. In order to determinethe dimensional characteristics of the relevant crimes, the issues of assessing thevalue of digital rights and digital currencies are considered.