MOSCOW, August 21 (RAPSI) – The number of recorded criminal cases over obstruction of legal business activity in the first six months of 2019 decreased by one third as compared to the same period of the previous year, according to the press service of Russia’s business ombudsman Boris Titov.

Titov believes that there are serious problems when it comes to prosecution of officials impeding legal business. To change the situation the ombudsman proposed to give prosecutors certain procedural powers, in particular the right to send investigators binding orders for opening criminal cases over these crimes. Such a measure would increase the number of cases and speed their investigation, he said.

Earlier, the business ombudsman’s office analyzed the criminal statistics for the first half of 2019 submitted by the Interior Ministry.  According to the past data, the number of registered business activity impeding crimes dropped by 31% (49). Only 25 persons committed these crimes were revealed this year.

However, the number of fraud crimes upped by 5.4% and reached 105,681 counts. The number of tax evasion files dropped by 1.5% (2,178). Economic crimes increased by 7.7% (25,873).