Review

Considering the centuries-old national and foreign experience of investigation and detection of crimes, an adoption of lawful and justified judgments by the courts is safeguarded only by an application of adequate, effective, secret tools of obtaining evidence, which, pursuant to the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine currently in force, are covert evidence-gathering activities. Despite the fact, that almost 85 % of grave offences and especially serious crimes in the world are detected by means of application of covert evidence-gathering tools; whereas the results of most covert evidence-gathering activities are considered admissible judicial evidence by the courts of Western countries, the analysis of more than five years of national practice of the application of covert evidence-gathering activities has shown a markedly different picture. Only 5 % of the results of application of covert evidence-gathering activities were considered an evidence by national courts. It foregrounds the scientific research in this field, not only due to the lack of application of covert evidence-gathering actions for obtaining evidence, but to develop other possibilities of the application of results of covert evidence-gathering actions in the criminal procedural averment.

The author of the article has set an aim to determine directions of using the results of covert evidence-gathering activities in the criminal procedural averment.

It is established that an equivocal understanding by the law enforcement authorities of the term and essence of evidence and averment directly affects an efficiency of application of the results of covert evidence-gathering activities in the criminal procedural averment.

The conclusion is made that the results of covert evidence-gathering activities are used in the criminal procedural averment for: 1) obtaining of some kinds of evidence, a justification with evidence of legal positions by the parties in criminal proceedings, for making a decision by the competent authorities in criminal proceedings; 2) for carrying out procedural activities considered as  instruments for obtaining evidence (the results of the covert evidence-gathering activities may be a justification ground for conducting evidence-gathering activities, inter alia, covert ones); 3) a tactical-organizational support of the procedural activities in criminal proceedings.

It is argued that an application of the results of covert evidence-gathering activities facilitates the efficiency of procedural activities in the criminal proceedings, namely: the most suitable time and place determination for carrying out a specific procedural activity; the choice of the most appropriate tactical methods and precognition of means and forms of their realization; use of austerity factors; minimization of tactical risks level; modelling of the behavior of the participants in criminal proceedings; determination in the organized group persons, prone to contacts with an investigator; determination of the degree of awareness of people, that resist an investigation, about plans and intentions of an investigator, about evidence available in the investigation, about sources of information; application of effective procedural, tactical and organizational methods against counteracting criminals; considering a risk of possible counteracting an investigation by thirds parties, methods and forms of its manifestation etc.

Keywords: covert evidence-gathering activities, results, averment, criminal proceedings, evidence, directions of application of covert evidence-gathering activities.