Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

Many of us are living in apartment buildings and this form of living is becoming more frequent and popular with urban development. A large number of those living in apartment buildings are also owners of the apartment they live in (or other nonresidential premises in the apartment building). Not only rights, but also certain obligations are associated with the ownership of apartments. One of the legal obligations is to bear the common costs of goods and services, which are being provided to the apartment bulding. In Slovak republic, the division of these costs and the settlement of monthly advance payments is being done on an annual basis. The basis for the division of these costs is the proportionality of the use of the common parts and common facilities of the apartment building, which is expressed in the so called person months (metric unit for settlement). By not reporting the true number of personmonths to the administrator, an owner may gain material benefit (achieve higher overpayments and lower arrears) and this illegal financial benefit needs to be covered and compensated by other owners in the same apartment building. In terms of criminal law, the owner is committing fraud (a related offence to insolvency crimes). The authors analyze the legal aspects related to this criminal offence with relation to case law, legal doctrine, based on the systematical and teleological method of interpretation of relevant legal norms. The article addresses also issues related to the purposefullness of sanctioning of perpetrators, reflecting that the primary purpose of their fraudulent behaviour was enrichment (material gain).

Russian economic reforms of the 1990s triggered off the massive economic transformation that went hand in hand with worsening of the life prospects of the population, rising of unemployment, inflation, personal debts and creating social unrests among other security issues. The new economic perspectives offered by the free and open market created the previously unthinkable incentives for many people. Borrowing and lending became fully legal endeavors and the new economic order offered unprecedented opportunities and a variety of consumer goods and services that were previously unavailable. One of the outcomes of this process was the sharp increase in the number of debts and personal insolvency issues. It appears that many Russian citizens lacked the financial literacy and healthy judgement in their financial management that led to the problems of economic insolvency debt. This paper focuses on the issue of personal economic and financial security in Russian Federation. We analyze the available data before and after the economic crisis of the 2007-2009 and the recent sanctions to demonstrate the patterns of borrowing behavior of the Russians. Our results show that borrowing decreased in the recent months following the introduction of economic sanctions which can be explained by the overall feeling of uncertainty and the fear of economic collapse of various households. We argue that good financial literacy might increase the basic economic awareness and contribute to the better security in the everyday life in the Russian Federation.