Medvedev: The fight against corruption will continue

The fight against corruption has begun on a solid basis, and it will continue. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said this during an interview with five television channels.

At the same time, Medvedev emphasized that no fight against corruption should be reduced to the persecution of officials as a class. “Otherwise, people will think that civil servants cannot be trusted, and this is not so. You can’t smear all with one paint,” he said.

The problem is, Medvedev noted that corruption crimes are difficult to evidence, since "no one fixes them when they are committed." He stated that such cases require a thorough investigation and should be based on facts, not messages. “While the conversations do not turn into data obtained by the procedural way, it is impossible to punish officials,” the prime minister said. “Do you need to immediately plant a person after they begin to disgrace him on television? I want to say that no one has canceled the presumption of innocence.”

Medvedev admitted that the investigation of corruption causes damage to the reputation of the authorities. “This, in fact, is a serious question. When the authorities present the result of this kind of work, the people have a question. And the rest are what? How do they have this? There is a difficult choice in power. But we need to move forward, we don’t have any other choice,” the prime minister said. “We cannot talk about reputation losses. We must be honest and correct errors, solve problems.”

Medvedev noted that criminal cases against his subordinates were not a surprise to him, since he was regularly reported to him about the situation in government agencies.

Medvedev positively responded about the activities of Anatoly Serdyukov as Minister of Defense. “During his stay at the post, complex and long -awaited changes in the army began,” the prime minister emphasized. He merged Serdyukov, he put an increase in the social status of military personnel, the solution of the housing problem, and progress with weapons. “This does not mean that Minister Serdyukov had no mistakes,” Medvedev said. At the same time, he emphasized that it is too early to talk about the participation of the former head of the military department in corruption schemes.

"Whatever they say there, even no one was charging him. There is a court. There is a consequence, and this is only one of the parties. There is a prosecution, there is a defense. The investigation should figure it out," Medvedev said.

Since the end of October, several high -profile criminal cases have been instituted related to corruption at a high level. Corruption scandals began with the exposure of officials of the Ministry of Defense. In the case of Oboronservice, Evgenia Vasilieva, who held the position of head of the Department of Property Relations of the Ministry of Defense, and several more people are accused. The case led to the resignation of Serdyukov.

The case of the theft of funds allocated for the development of the system, which led to the dismissal of the head of the RKS Yuri Urlichich, is also investigated. The head of Rostelecom, Alexander Strotorov, resigned. The state television channel "Russia-1" showed a film about corruption of the ex-head of the Ministry of Agriculture Elena Skrynnik. The authors of compromising evidence will try to prove that the Skrynnik as the head of Rosagrolysing and as a minister caused damage in the amount of at least 40 billion rubles.

In addition, four defendants in the theft in the housing and communal services of St. Petersburg were arrested. This is one official and three leaders of the company, which laid 600 kilometers of low -quality pipes around the city. The former head of the City Energy Committee is still a witness in the case, he resigned. The total amount of theft from the city budget is estimated at 3 billion rubles.