corruption in Russia

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Vladimir Kislukhin,

Police colonel, member of the International Police Association

Kirov, Russia

Corruption and legal liability for it in Russian Federation

Corruption is a comprehensive and complicated phenomenon which has social, criminal, and criminological characteristics.

In Russian Federation corruption has stricken almost all the social life spheres, including spheres of state administration, local government, military service, medicine, education, legal and law enforcement systems, deputy corps. Lately corruption has penetrated into economical sphere including private enterprise and become a threat to the state sovereignty and security.

Corruption as a kind of criminal activity is characterized by interpenetration of criminal business representatives and officialdom for the purpose of mutual enrichment, rivals security guaranteeing and legal control banning so that they could get illegal incomes.

In the last report of the international non-government organization “Transparency International” Russia was put on the 143th place from 180 countries where research of corruption had been held. The worse situation is in Togo, Angola, Guinea-Bissau.

Corruption in Russia is considered not as a specific corpus delicti but as the whole set of related acts aimed at enrichment of the illegal activity members.

Jurisprudence includes in the definition of corruption fourteen crime acts stated in the Criminal Code of Russian Federation. In this crime group there are such acts as abuse of power (Article 201), corrupt business practices (Article 204), official forgery (Article 292), acts of bribing (Articles 290 and 291), other criminal offences.

Russian legislation provides strong measures of legal liability for corruption crimes committal. For example, for the committal of such crimes as abuse of power, corrupt business practices there follows the punishment of five years' imprisonment. For those who committed abuse of power with violation of rights, legitimate interests and people health a ten years' imprisonment is provided.

The most common corruption form in Russia is bribery. The Criminal Code sets responsibility of seven to twelve years' imprisonment and a fine up to 1 million roubles (27 000 Euro) for bribe-accepting. In fact jurisprudence comes to nothing more than rather merciful verdicts with respect to corruptionists. Mainly it is a suspended sentence or a payment of small fines.

However, corruption is a product of not only Russian reality. In opinion of Nikolay Koshcheev, the President of Kirov Regional Branch IPA and a recent head of Kirov Regional Organized Crime Enforcement Department, corruption is an international phenomenon, typical of all the countries and independent of government system, economical development level, and political regime. The difference consists only in the problem scale.

Thus, in accord with public opinion polls the most corrupt authority institutes in Russia are considered to be law enforcement agencies, then there follow political parties. Police (militia) agencies are also called “corrupt” in such countries as Georgia, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Republic of South Africa, and Ukraine. Judicial authority is considered the most corrupt one in Afghanistan, Croatia, Macedonia, and Venezuela.

The rapid increase of corruption crimes in Russia fell on 1990-2000 when criminal capital and corrupt machine of government joined. A very harsh centralization of governmental authority, its isolation, overconsentration of power in the hands of some officials, non-transparency of their decision-making, their unofficiality, and, as a result, control absence of all the processes relating to distribution of means of the state budget are called the reasons of the increase. Another reason of corruption is a huge amount of officials which have the opportunity to influence on financial flow or conditions of economical activity.

According to the specialists' estimates, there are now 35 million officials in Russia. Economically active population of the country is only 70 million citizens, i.e. there is one official on two people working and making material benefits and service.

Officials are well-organized and juristically educated. They allow no one to deprive them of privileges received from the state and population.

Prosecutors' control showed that officials almost in all organizations of government and municipal service had taken an illegal part in business activity, held stocks, had paid positions in commercial organizations and had not produced declarations fixed by law.

The 3rd reason of corruption growth in Russia is insufficient financing, bad technical support of the police, and a low social defense of the law enforcement agencies. As a result of weak financing, police officers have a low pay in conditions of constant inflation. This causes prestige drop of working in the police. Problems in personnel selection and placing appear. As a result, unstable to material temptation police officers begin to enlarge their family budget by means of extorting bribes from lawbreakers and commit other mercenary crimes instead of struggling against corruption.

In recent years country's leadership has taken steps directed at improvement of work for corruption counteraction, creation of effective anti-corruption mechanisms in the state administration system on federal and regional levels.

Thus, on 19th May 2008 the President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev signed the Decree “About Measures of Corruption Counteraction”. For the purpose of creating a corruption counteraction system in Russian Federation and elimination of reasons causing it he established the Council under the President of Russian Federation for Corruption Counteraction and appointed himself its chairman. For solving of current matters of the Council activity the President established the Council presidium by the Decree which is in its way an interdepartmental commission. Dmitry Medvedev appointed the head of his administration Sergey Naryshkin as the chairman of the Council for Corruption Counteraction presidium.

Now Russian Government and President's administration are developing criteria for the detection of officials' work quality both in the government and regions of Russian Federation.

The President charged the Prosecutor General's Office to coordinate actions of law enforcement agencies which deal with corruption crimes. The Prosecutor General's Office developed departmental strategy of corruption prevention. According to it prosecutors' efforts should be focused not only on checking of state and municipal service law fulfillment, they should reveal reasons and conditions which cause corruption. In spite of some difficulties the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russian Federation contributes much to the struggle against corruption. As a result of measures taken by the Ministry of Internal Affairs along with Prosecutors' Office and Federal Security Service, for the last five years the number of detected corruption crimes has increased as much as one and a half, bribes prevented - 24% more. This year together with Federal Service of Financial Monitoring the police detected 5000 facts of conclusion of doubtful deals made for the purpose of criminal income legalization.

Thus, at present in Russian Federation a program of corruption and criminal income laundering counteraction has been established and begun working.

President's program of corruption counteraction provides improvement and approval of federal laws about struggle against corruption, limitation of deputy inviolability from criminal prosecution, checking those people against corruptibility who pretend to hold posts in government and municipal bodies. A special attention in the program is paid to measures of crime detection in a budgetary sphere, those connected with national projects realization in spheres of public health, agriculture and housing and communal services.

The President of Russia will report annually on results of program fulfillment in his addresses to government bodies and population of Russian Federation.