Counteracting Shadow Business in the Conditions of Sustainable Economic Development

The issue of combating the shadow economy in the context of sustainable economic development in the Russian Federation is highly relevant. Despite measures taken by state policies to neutralize and eliminate it, the shadow economy is gaining momentum and causing serious harm to the country’s interests. Currently, there is a need to develop measures aimed at combating the shadow economy, considering all specific features of its commission. It is evident that the criminal policy against shadow business should include adequate and effective criminal penalties, acting as a deterrent for committing economic crimes. The research aims to examine current theories and methods of countering the shadow economy in the conditions of sustainable economic development in the Russian Federation, identify current problems in the legislative approach to constructing signs of the most common criminal offenses constituting the shadow business sector, and make relevant proposals for their solution at the legislative level. The methodology of this research is based on the methods of universal dialectical cognition, formal-legal method, analysis, and modeling methods, which makes it possible to conduct a detailed comparative legal analysis of the provisions of the criminal policy against the shadow economy and judicial practice and formulate proposals to eliminate legislative inaccuracies in presenting the features of the analyzed criminal offenses. The main conclusion of this research is that in the conditions of sustainable economic development in the Russian Federation, there is a clear need to criticize the legislative approach to formulating the features of economic crimes, make proposals addressed to the legislator to clarify the criteria for distinguishing economic offenses and crimes, create an effective legal framework aimed at combating the shadow economy, and develop and propose preventive measures in the researched area.