The number of corruption-related crimes involving top government officials and large bribes increased 100% in 2010 year-on-year, Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said on Thursday.
“Criminal proceedings were launched against some 10,000 officials, one-third of them were started for taking brides,” Nurgaliyev said at a session of a Russian presidential council for combating corruption.
More than 20 top Russian officials were brought to trial last year compared with half that number in 2009. “Such cases almost doubled,” Nurgaliyev said adding that corruption remains an issue of concern despite efforts taken by the government.
Nurgaliyev said the Russian Interior Ministry plans to speed up efforts to combat corruption. He said the main focus will be made on detecting corruption-related crimes among businessmen and also ministry officials themselves.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev launched a wholesale reform to clean up corruption but admitted earlier that his anti-corruption drive had so far yielded few practical results.
The Berlin-based non-governmental anti-corruption organization Transparency International has persistently rated Russia as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. In the 2009 Corruption Perception Index, Russia was ranked 146 out of 180 countries, with a ranking below countries like Togo, Pakistan and Libya.
President Dmitry Medvedev gave prosecutors three months to verify income declarations filed by government officials as part of his drive to stamp out Russia’s rampant corruption.
“You hear that they all have palaces in the countryside and the declarations they make” are tiny, Medvedev told a government meeting on corruption in the Kremlin today. “Let’s check it all. If there are discrepancies, prepare proposals on the accountability of these people.”
Medvedev, who called corruption a threat to national security, has pushed for government officials to make their income declarations public and wants new legislation that will dramatically increase fines for taking bribes. Russia is the world’s most corrupt major economy, according to Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index released in October. It ranked 154th among 178 countries.
Among new proposals, bribes under 25,000 rubles ($832) will entail either a fine of 25 times to 50 times the amount, or a jail term of up to three years and a fine. Bribes of over a million rubles will carry a fine of between 80 times and 100 times the sum or a jail term of up to 15 years plus a fine.
“We have to find a way to undermine the material interest in bribe taking,” Medvedev’s aide Larisa Brycheva told reporters after the meeting. Anti-corruption amendments to more than a dozen laws will be sent to the State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, by the end of the month, she said.
Bernd Pulch 