The Senate approved the law on imprisonment for up to 20 years for bribery

At the 39th plenary session of the Senate, the law "On amendments and additions to the Criminal Code aimed at ensuring the inevitability of responsibility for corruption-related crimes" was considered. This was reported by the press service of the upper house of the parliament. The Criminal Code is supplemented with the new term "crimes related to corruption", according to which it is determined that the acts provided for in the relevant articles, parts and clauses of the Code are considered to be crimes related to corruption, and it is envisaged to increase the punishment for these crimes. Also, through the amendments made by this law to the relevant articles of the Criminal Code, embezzlement or embezzlement, fraud, evasion of taxes or other compulsory payments, but the crime Norms such as early conditional release from punishment and replacement of punishment with a lighter one are not applied to persons who have not fully compensated the damage caused as a result, and to persons who have committed bribery, bribe giving, and mediation in bribe giving crimes. Akmal Burkhanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Agency, wrote that the Senate approved this law. According to him, if the crimes of abuse of power or authority (Article 205) and inaction of power (Article 208) were committed with malicious intent, imprisonment for up to five years; the penalty of imprisonment for up to 20 years is prescribed for receiving bribe (Article 210), giving bribe (Article 211) and mediating bribe giving (Article 212). The eighth section of the Criminal Code is supplemented with the term "Corruption crimes" and the crimes provided for in 16 articles (Article 167, part three, paragraph "d", Article 168, part four, paragraph "g", 192-9, 192- Article 10, Article 192-11, second part, clause "v", Article 205, second part, clause "v", Article 206, second part, clause "v", Article 208, second part, Article 209, second part "v" Articles 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 and the second part of Article 301, paragraph "b"), as well as the crimes committed in relation to the income obtained as a result of the commission of corruption crimes, provided for in Article 243, are recognized as corruption crimes. The law will enter into force after being signed by the president. It should be noted that this draft law, which envisages the drastic strengthening of measures of responsibility for corruption-related crimes in Uzbekistan, was adopted by the deputies of the Oliy Majlis in the first reading in December 2021.