05.07.2021 The Supreme Court issued a judgment in case № 639/6950/17, in which it concluded that fraud can be committed not only in the form of active actions, but also in the form of inaction, in particular failure to report the circumstances relevant to appointment or termination of social assistance payments.
Thus, in the circumstances of this case, the defendant twice unreasonably received social assistance for persons moving from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and the areas of the anti-terrorist operation.
When submitting the application and documents for payment, he stated that neither he nor his family members had funds in the deposit bank account in the amount exceeding 10 times the subsistence level, although in fact he had an open deposit account in PJSC CB PrivatBank in the amount of USD 6,210.95.
Courts in all instances agreed with the qualification of investigators that without disclosing the true information, the person committed fraudulent acts that lead to criminal liability.
According to the normative definition of fraud, if a person, applying to the social protection body for state social assistance, intentionally concealed the facts that caused the consequences of a legal nature and caused material damage to the injured party, such actions are grounds for both civil and criminal law relations.
The Supreme Court in its ruling drew attention to the following:
Fraud as a criminal method may consist in informing the victim of false information (active deception) and / or concealment of certain circumstances, if the person has an obligation to report them (passive deception). Therefore, the condition for recognizing fraud as a sign of the objective side of fraud is to use it to seize property or acquire the right to property.
Thus, failure to report (not specify) information about the availability of funds as a way to receive social benefits (assistance) is one of the types of fraud, characterized by documentary (written) form and manifested through passive behavior of a person who does not report mandatory information.
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