More than a quarter of employees confirm the presence of corruption in their companies, HeadHunter found. The leaders in the prevalence of kickbacks were the housing and public utilities sector, the energy sector, the civil service and the cultural sector.

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26% of employees admit that their companies have a practice of kickbacks, the HeadHunter research service found. This practice is present at all levels of the organization, noted 6% of respondents, 11% emphasized that we are talking about corruption at the highest level, another 9% admit the existence of isolated cases of bribes, but believe that the problem is not systemic in nature. 31% of respondents are confident that there is no corruption in their organization. The rest simply say that if it exists, they don’t know about it.

The HeadHunter research service surveyed 6.6 thousand people in April, of which 4.7 thousand are currently employed.

The leader in kickbacks is the housing and communal services sector, as follows from the survey. According to 12% of workers in this sector who participated in the survey, this practice exists in the industry at all levels. Another 18% are confident that it is rooted at the highest level. The energy industry took second place: 9% of employees in the sector believe that kickbacks are practiced at all levels (13% at the highest level). The third “leader” is completed by the civil service and the sphere of art and culture: according to 8% of workers in these areas, corruption is widespread at all levels.

The oil and gas sector ranks second in terms of corruption at the top management level: this practice is widespread there, according to 17% of the employees surveyed.

In general, 70% of respondents noted their negative attitude towards kickbacks and believe that they need to be fought. Another 27% think that “nothing can be done about it,” and the remaining 3% are generally convinced that this is the only way to make money in their sector.

"A couple of times"

5% of respondents admitted that they themselves took kickbacks: 1% - constantly, and the remaining 4% answered that they did it “just a couple of times.” Among the latter, almost half (44%) decided to take this step only when the same supplier was chosen for objective reasons, that is, the rollback did not affect the choice of supplier. A fifth of those who took bribes several times (19%) felt remorse afterwards, so they decided “not to do it again.” Another 14% said they were offered amounts that were too small and not worth the risk.

Almost half of those who never took kickbacks had this opportunity. They most often justified their refusal by saying that it was wrong (31%), that it would harm the company (14%), and that it was not accepted in the team (7%). Less than 4% were simply afraid that they would be caught in violations.

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As RBC previously reported, according to an EY study on fraud risks in the corporate sector in 2016, over the past year the situation has improved somewhat: while last year 48% of respondents in Russia considered corruption and bribery in the corporate sector to be widespread, this year this the share dropped to 34% against the global average of 39%. The share of those who reported using bribes to obtain contracts in their sector decreased threefold - from 24 to 8%. Nevertheless, more than half of those surveyed believe that the fight against corruption in Russia is not effective enough.

In last year's edition of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, which reflects perceptions of corruption in the public sector, Russia ranked 119th out of 168 countries represented in the ranking, scoring 29 points. The index ranges from 0 to 100, with a higher index value indicating a lower level of corruption.

Azerbaijan, Guyana and Sierra Leone showed the same result as Russia in the annual Transparency study. For example, Honduras, Egypt and Senegal scored higher. A year earlier, Russia was in 136th place. Vice-President of Transparency International Elena Panfilova explained the improvement in Russia’s position in the ranking by the “compression” of the corruption “food supply” due to the current economic situation, as well as the introduction of restrictions regarding the declaration of income and property of civil servants. The best indicators in the ranking are traditionally those of the Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Finland and Sweden (91, 90 and 89 points, respectively, in last year’s index).

HeadHunter has identified the most corrupt sectors of the economy