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By Mike Sidwell
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In a speech to Russia's Council of Legislators on 2 July, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev outlined a plan to combat corruption, involving “tougher criminal punishment for corrupt officials, more rigid requirements for civil servants and judges and more opportunity for the public to monitor officials,” reports Associated Press (AP). |
Since his inauguration in May, Medvedev has stressed the problem of corruption in Russia. In his speech, Medvedev said: “It is clear that corruption in our country is a genuine, systemic evil which we must fight against”, and called for a new anti-corruption legislation to be in place by 2009 (Kremlin). According to the St. Petersburg Times, Medvedev will present the bill to the entire Duma for a vote in the autumn.
The possible cost of corruption in Russia was highlighted by a senior Russian government prosecutor in June who declared that “corrupt officials are siphoning off [US] $120 billion dollars a year [€75 billion] from the government's national budget”, reports Moscow News. According to the same article, the figure represents approximately a third of the US $376 billion [€236 billion] budget for 2008. In July, another senior Russian official stepped forward claiming that: “A third of all money spent by the Russian government on its armed forces is lost to corruption” (BBC).
According to AP, Medvedev has said that "some people tried to discourage him from launching the anti-corruption plan, saying it will yield no results." The same article quotes him asserting that dealing with corruption is a "matter of honor for the government."
Some commentators are cautious of Medvedev's initiative. AP writes that “past Kremlin efforts to stem problems such as corruption have amounted to little but pledges and a few cases featured prominently in the state-run media.”
Kirill Kabanov, the director of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, a Russian based advocacy group, warned that any efforts to fight corruption are “doomed to fail unless nongovernmental organizations and the media are allowed to operate as watchdogs over bureaucracy,” writes the St. Petersburg Times.
Similarly, Elena Panfilova, head of TI Russia, emphasised in an interview with Reuters: “The best thing he [Medvedev] can do now is to make public the full text of the plan and put it to open debate by experts and the public ... Such things need full transparency."