The Government of the Russian Federation has approved and submitted to the State Duma a draft amendment to Article 183 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which toughens the responsibility for illegally obtaining and using information contained in databases of customs authorities, as well as from information systems of other government agencies that constitute commercial, tax or banking secrets.
Instead of the main penalty in the form of a fine, a lower threshold of punishment in the form of imprisonment of 2 years and a fine of up to 5 million rubles is introduced.
In the Russian Federation, 65 information resources have been identified that provide Internet access to information from customs databases containing tax secrets. The "black market" of illegal trafficking in this information continues to grow, and illegal acts in this area are recurrent, according to the explanatory note to the bill.
