Damascus-Sana
Damascus Financial Investigation Judge Fouad Sukkar confirmed that Legislative Decree No. 8 of 2021 regarding the new consumer protection law includes a wide range of strict controls and penalties that generally guarantee the enhancement of the citizen's right to provide goods and basic materials to him, the possibility of obtaining them, knowing their prices, continuing to secure them and preventing monopoly acts that It can be committed by weak souls of some merchants, corporations, or commercial establishments.
Judge Sukkar said in an interview with Sana that, in conjunction with the living conditions as a result of the unjust economic blockade imposed on our country, the Syrian legislator has tended to work towards increasing the level of special deterrence in the penalties stipulated in the new law.
Judge Sukar stated that the issuance of the law did not come to hold merchants or those working in trade accountable, but rather out of legislative need and legal treatment to establish a regular basis for sellers, producers and merchants, and at the same time preserve the rights of consumers, especially since the crimes and penalties stipulated in the new law are imagined to be committed by merchants and non-dealers, and the law did not It is stipulated that the perpetrator must have a certain characteristic, and therefore it cannot be said that the new law addresses and holds accountable the category of merchants without other industrialists, craftsmen, or any other person, regardless of his status, but rather includes everyone.
And on the impact of the law on traffickers with the subsistence of the citizen, among drunken people, that the new law has tightened all penalties and penalties for crimes stipulated in the old law, as it combined the imposition of freedom-depriving penalties (such as imprisonment or imprisonment) with the large financial fines to be imposed on violators of its provisions without giving the competent courts authority Choose the penalty of imprisonment or a fine against the violator, as was the case in the old law for crimes affecting the citizen's livelihood.
The new law has also introduced, according to Judge Sukkar, new crimes and penalties, some of which reach temporary imprisonment for a period of no less than fourteen years, when any person in wartime, war operations, disasters, or any exceptional circumstances the country is going through, commits theft, embezzlement, or trafficking in materials and goods. It is intended for the citizen's subsistence, which is for the most part subsidized by the state's prices.
Regarding the punishment of employees of internal trade and consumer protection who are concealment of violations, Judge Sukkar pointed to the broad powers that the new law assigned to workers authorized by the powers of the judicial police responsible for controlling and prosecuting the perpetrators, indicating that the penalties imposed by the new law against every worker begging himself to neglect his duty to monitor or divulge Any information about the task related to his work or proof of his knowledge of any violation and he does not carry out measures to seize it is not sufficiently deterrent according to his opinion due to the importance of the role of the supply police officers in detecting criminal acts in parallel with their broad powers.
The new Consumer Protection Law entered into force and its provisions became applicable to all those addressing its provisions after it was published in the Official Gazette on 4-12-2021, while all criminal acts committed before the aforementioned date remain subject to the provisions of the old Consumer Protection Law No. 14 of 2015 according to Judge Sukar who He pointed out that since the issuance of the new law, the Ministry of Justice has been keen to issue circulars to the Public Prosecution judges to follow up the implementation of its rulings and to take into account all legal means that achieve the goals that the legislator wanted him to do.
In terms of the legal principle, as explained by Sukkar, the investigating judge only considers criminal cases, meaning that the offense attributed to the defendant must be a felony. Based on the foregoing, the criminal offenses described in the new consumer protection law are theft, embezzlement, trafficking in food flour, or trafficking in any of the The materials or commodities whose prices are subsidized by the state. As for the remaining other crimes stipulated in the new law, they remain within the jurisdiction of the courts of first instance of rationing penalties spread in the governorates and updated by Legislative Decree No. 9 of 2013 that consider food issues only.
Judge Sukkar stated that there are some crimes that the provisions of the new Consumer Protection Law stipulated that the violator must be arrested and referred to the judiciary, and there are other crimes that it is sufficient to organize the seizures to refer them according to the principles in force to the Public Prosecution Office of Supply or Finance, as the case may be.
Maha Al-Atrash
