As part of its consideration of the cassation appeal filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Court of Cassation, on 28 August 2026, issued a landmark and precedent-setting decision concerning the elements of the offence under Article 324 of the Criminal Code — participation in, or involvement in, a criminal subculture-affiliated group — while also conducting a systematic analysis of offences related to the criminal subculture.

In particular, interpreting the specific features of combating organized crime and criminal subculture in light of the relevant provisions of international conventions and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Cassation established the key characteristics of a criminal subculture-affiliated group, or the “thieves’ world,” and noted that, from the perspective of legislative regulation, a criminal subculture-affiliated group and the term “thieves’ world,” used by the legislator as a synonym for that concept, are essentially identical and refer to the same phenomenon.

Accordingly, for the purposes of the above-mentioned legal provision, a criminal subculture-affiliated group should be understood not as individual groups or groupings, but as the entire “thieves’ world” as a unified system, with its informal hierarchy, authorities and influence, operating in accordance with the rules of conduct established and recognized by it.

It is characterized by the “resolution of issues” through violence, intimidation, and coercion. Moreover, the existence of the “thieves’ world,” as a notorious fact, does not in itself require proof in the context of criminal proceedings.

In other words, the body conducting the proceedings is not required to substantiate and prove, in each individual case, the existence of the “thieves’ world” as a system adhering to a criminal subculture.

With regard to the elements of the offence consisting in involvement in the implementation of the objectives pursued by a criminal subculture-affiliated group, the Court of Cassation noted that such an offence is manifested through a person who is not a member of the criminal subculture-affiliated group being involved in any way in the objectives pursued by the group and facilitating their implementation.

In other words, the above-mentioned persons are outside the criminal hierarchy, do not belong to or participate in a criminal subculture-affiliated group (the “thieves’ world”), but merely have a supportive involvement in the implementation of its objectives.

The Court of Cassation emphasized that, although sending parcels to penitentiary institutions is, in principle, permitted by law and cannot, in itself, constitute a basis for establishing participation in or involvement with a criminal subculture-affiliated group, nevertheless, it may be of some relevance in assessing the above-mentioned circumstances, taking into account the range of persons to whom the parcels are sent, the frequency with which they are sent, as well as the nature of the relationship between those persons and the sender (for example, where they are neither close persons nor close relatives of the sender), and other relevant circumstances.

The Court of Cassation established that a person adhering to a criminal subculture undertakes to resolve a particular issue not as a private individual, but as a person adhering to the norms and customs of the criminal subculture, conditioning their actions by the ideology of that phenomenon and the objectives pursued by it, and that such actions fall outside the scope of relations concerning offences against property.

The Court of Cassation’s decision is available here.