The right to a fair trial and international cooperation in criminal matters: Article 6 ECHR and the recovery of assets in grand corruption cases

Are fair trial rights general principles of transnational criminal law (TCL)? If so, how do they protect individuals who are affected by transnational proceedings? Posing these questions in the context of international cooperation efforts aimed at ‘asset recovery’, this contribution asks whether State Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) are likely to violate the right to a fair trial in Article 6 ECHR when they directly enforce confiscation orders that are issued abroad with respect to the proceeds, objects or instrumentalities of high-value, high-level political corruption offences or substitute assets. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) considers that ECHR State Parties might exceptionally violate Article 6 ECHR in cooperative cases if the alleged victim ‘has suffered or risks suffering a flagrant denial of a fair trial in the requesting country’. Surveying its case law, I argue that the ‘flagrant denial of justice’ standard greatly attenuates the right to a fair trial in cases of international cooperation in criminal matters. In practice, the Court appears unwilling to find violations of Article 6 ECHR in such cases when the foreign proceedings do not involve allegations of treatment contrary to Articles 2 or 3 ECHR. This, it is submitted, reflects the difficulty of assessing ‘fairness’ in globalised law enforcement situations, a factor that also complicates efforts to deduce a general principle of a right to a fair trial from ‘justice’ as an objective of TCL. If those principles are formulated inductively and comparatively, the ECtHR’s case law nevertheless goes some way towards showing that a weak transnational fair trial right may be a general principle of TCL within the ‘legal space’ of the ECHR

Revisiting the firm, industry, and country effects on profitability under recessionary and expansion periods: a multilevel analysis

Despite voluminous past research, the relevance of firm, industry, and country effects on profitability, particularly under adverse contexts, is still unclear. We reconcile institutional theory with the resource‐based view and industrial organization economics to investigate the effects of economic adversity, such as the 2008 global economic crisis. Using a three‐level random coefficient model, we examine 15,008 firms across 10 emerging and 10 developed countries for the 2005–2011 period. We find that firm effects become stronger under adversity, whereas industry effects become weaker, as well as country main and interaction effects, particularly among the emerging economies. These findings confirm our assumptions that the firm's own fate is, to a great extent, self‐determined; a reality that is even more pronounced during periods of extreme economic hardship

Influence of paratypical factors on the productive longevity and lifelong productivity of Holstein cows of the Dutch selection of different generations

The duration of the economic use of cows is determined by a number of genotypic and paratypic factors. Without assessing the impact of these factors, it is difficult to succeed in improving this trait. The purpose of the research is to determine the influence of paratypical factors on the productive longevity and lifelong productivity of the Holstein black-and-white cows of the Dutch breeding of two generations. The study was carried out at Priozernoye OJSC of the Tyumen Region. The object of the study was cows of the Holstein black-and-white breed imported from Holland (zero generation) and their descendants of the first reproduction (first generation), who left the herd for seven years. The cows of the generations under study were divided into groups depending on the degree of paratypic factors: the age of the first calving, milk yield for 305 days of the first lactation and the average duration of the service period. The research results have shown that the zero-generation cows calving before the age of 24 months exceeded the peers calving at an older age (27-34 months) by 249-459 days (p<0.05-0.01) and 3,403-7,631 kg (p<0.05-0.01), respectively. A similar relationship between the characteristics was also observed among the cows of the first generation. A comprehensive analysis of the influence of paratypic factors on the studied traits has shown that the longest productive life and lifetime milk yield were characteristic of Holstein cows of the Dutch breeding of both generations, calving at the age of not later than 24-27 months, with a milk yield of 6,000-7,000 kg of milk in the first lactation and the duration of the service period of not more than 200-260 days

Differentiation of a Criminal Procedural form as a Condition of Development of Modern Legislation

The purpose of the article is to study the current state of differentiation of a criminal procedural form as one of the conditions of legislation development. To this end, the tasks are as follows: 1) to analyze scientific periodicals devoted to the problem of definition of the concept of "procedural form" and "differentiation of procedural form"; 2) to distinguish the differentiated forms of pre-trial investigation and judicial proceedings on the basis of a systematic examination of the current criminal procedural legislation. While writing the article, a set of general scientific and special methods of scientific knowledge was used, namely: historical-legal, dialectical, formal-legal and system-structural method. The interrelated application of these methods led to the science-based conclusions and suggestions. The article presents scientific points of view regarding the interpretation of the concept of "criminal procedural form" and "differentiation of procedural form", which made it possible to state the lack of unity of their understanding. Legal understanding of the essence of criminal procedural form is not only theoretical, but also applied, because: first, it is the key to achieve the tasks of criminal proceedings; secondly, it guarantees the implementation of the principles of criminal proceedings and respect for the rights of the participants in the proceedings; third, its violation leads to the inadmissibility of evidence. In the context of the development of criminal procedural legislation differentiated forms of pre-trial investigation and judicial proceedings are of great importance. The latter also provide an additional guarantee for a particular category of persons (e.g. juveniles, persons who have committed a socially dangerous act in the state of insanity, etc.). Based on an analysis of the CPC of Ukraine, particular and special differentiated forms of pre-trial investigation and court proceedings are distinguished