Corruption in Russia: high-profile cases of 2012

Rice. "Vedomosti.ru"

There has not yet been much success in the fight against corruption, despite the legislative measures taken, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev said on July 30 in an interview with the British newspaper The Times.

Anti-corruption legislation is not enough

“Corruption is a systemic threat for our country, as for any state. But for our country in particular, because we have a young democracy and not yet fully established economic institutions. I do not see much success in the fight against corruption recently,” - Dmitry Medvedev said to the British publication.

“We have created anti-corruption legislation, there are thousands of criminal cases filed against officials, a significant part of which end in real terms. Is this enough? No, not enough! We need to dig deeper, we need to hold them accountable and we need to improve institutions,” the Prime Minister believes.

In March, Dmitry Medvedev, as President of the Russian Federation, signed the National Anti-Corruption Plan for 2012-2013. The previous plan was in effect in 2010-2011 and made it possible to formulate the legislative and organizational foundations of the anti-corruption fight.

In December 2011, Vladimir Putin, while serving as Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, promised to continue to toughly fight corruption. During the direct line, TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov reminded the head of government of his calls for the arrests of smugglers (“where are the arrests?”), which he made in June 2009 at a meeting of the government presidium.

According to Vladimir Putin, there are examples when governors are sent to prison, and they serve their entire sentence. People “at the deputy minister level” are also “put in prison.” “The main thing is not harshness, but the inevitability of punishment,” Putin emphasized.

Corruption and family business

The head of the Konakovsky district of the Tver region, Viktor Krysov, will remain under arrest until September 29, 2012. The corresponding decision was made by the Basmanny Court of Moscow. According to investigators, the official demanded $1.5 million from one of the Moscow businessmen for the opportunity to register ownership of an 8-hectare plot near the Ivankovskoye reservoir in the Tver region.

Viktor Krysov’s wife Tatyana Kheba turned out to be one of the richest women in the Tver region. Over the course of six years, more than 33 objects were registered in her name - agricultural land plots, land for housing construction, summer cottages, houses in the most attractive places of the Konakovo region, reports the Tverskoye News Agency.

Family business of officials and related crimes are not uncommon in Russia. The other day, as Interfax reports, the court arrested the wife of former deputy head of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev in absentia on charges of extortion and legalization of property acquired by criminal means. Larisa Konteeva has been put on the international wanted list. And on August 3, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court will hold the next hearing in Konteev’s case.

The investigation believes that the Konteyevs and several people from their entourage demanded from the director of the local food warehouse (the largest in the region) a share in the authorized capital of the company, and then legalized the seized property.

The story of Konteev’s criminal case began last August. He was charged with organizing two contract killings. The court arrested the deputy head of the city, and on August 23 it will be exactly one year since he has been in pre-trial detention. The official was accused of ordering the murder of two Kurgan entrepreneurs, done to facilitate the passage of products to the food supply base. In addition to murder, Konteev is charged with extortion, receiving a bribe in the amount of 5 million rubles, and money laundering.

High-profile corruption cases of July

Positive statistics on the fight against corruption in July were supplemented by several more judicial and investigative decisions.

On July 27, the Presnensky Court of Moscow found the former vice-mayor of Moscow on issues of control over investments and contracts guilty of fraud. The prosecutor demanded seven years in prison for Alexander Ryabinin, but the former official was given three years probation and ordered to pay a million rubles in fine. Entrepreneur Vadim Kozlov, who acted as Ryabinin's confidant, was sentenced to two years of suspended imprisonment.

According to the Rossiya-24 TV channel, the criminal case against Ryabinin was unprecedented in terms of the volume of bribes. But the court left only one episode in the verdict - the story of the illegal acquisition of luxury real estate in the very center of Moscow - 200 square meters on Bakhrushina Street. The rest of the accusation could not be proven. In 2009, when Ryabinin was still working in the capital’s government, he was named the richest Moscow official. The income statement shows an amount of 24 million rubles.

Also, at the end of July, the investigation of the criminal case against Alexander Serov, the former mayor of Bratsk, Irkutsk region, was completed. The case has been sent to court for consideration on the merits, the Vesti.Ru website reports. Serov is accused of receiving a bribe in the amount of 15 million rubles. The basis for initiating a criminal case was the materials of the operational-search activities of the Federal Security Service of Russia in the Irkutsk region.

According to investigators, from August 2010 to February 2011, Serov extorted a bribe of 15 million rubles from one of the Bratsk entrepreneurs for assistance in the development of enterprises operating in the housing and communal services sector. On February 3 last year, while receiving another part of the bribe, Serov was detained in his own apartment. On the same day, the mayor officially resigned of his own free will, and the next day the former mayor was arrested.

Over three years, 17 thousand criminal cases were opened in Russia against officials convicted of corruption - from governors, mayors and generals to traffic police inspectors and housing department chiefs. The amount of the average bribe in Russia has increased tenfold. And every week more and more new materials are submitted to the courts.