Protection for the tick

A draft law on the protection of the rights of people who reported corruption was submitted to the State Duma

The initiative belongs to the Ministry of Labor. The document, published on the government's website, states that those who report corruption will receive free legal assistance and will be protected from wrongful dismissal from work. "Protection" will be valid for two years from the date of application. That is, within two years, an employee cannot be fired or transferred to a lower position without a decision on this by a special anti-corruption commission, which will also include a prosecutor.

The government website says that Russia has committed itself to protecting whistleblowers of corruption by joining the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) Convention against Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

However, the federal law on accession to the convention was adopted back in 2012, and a specific bill has only just been introduced. Experts told Novaya Gazeta about what this could be connected with and what will change with the adoption of the amendment.

“The Ministry of Labor was obliged to take up the development of the bill back in 2013, when the government issued an order,” says Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora international human rights organization. - In 2013, and then repeatedly, the Ministry of Labor advocated the submission of this project to the State Duma. But they responded to this proposal only now. There is obviously a reason: maybe it's the activation of Russia in the OECD, or the reinforcement of the national anti-corruption plan, or in general it is part of the 2018 election campaign.

Ilya Shumanov, deputy director of the Russian branch of Transparency International, believes that Russia has recently stepped up in fulfilling the obligations of the national anti-corruption plan in order to “only formally” pretend to the OECD that the authorities are working to combat corruption:

- The State Duma, I think, will very quickly stamp all these things, because the bill contains general provisions. In fact, no legal consequences for the protection of applicants will be provided.

People who report violations of the law and facts of corruption in our country most often end up losing their jobs, says Chikov:

- Moreover, today this category of people is not singled out in any way in Russian legislation. That is, Russian legislation does not know a separate legal status for "whistleblowers" (we will call them that). Although the international obligations of the Russian Federation require this. Firstly, it follows from the UN Convention against Corruption, which contains relevant provisions. Secondly, it is worth looking at the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, which has been formed over the past ten years, there are several decisions regarding this category.

The lack of legislation regulating the behavior of whistleblowers leads to the fact that the applicant publishes information sensitive to the authorities in the media - simply because he had no other way to convey this information to decision makers.

Shumanov believes that the government is "just going in the direction of ticking":

- At first, Russia tried to pretend to report to the OECD that we have a law on the protection of witnesses in our country, and according to this law, persons who turn out to be witnesses in a criminal case are subject to protection measures. But there are other situations when the facts of corruption emerge, and criminal cases are either not initiated, or this is not connected with the initiation of criminal cases, for example, in conflicts of interest or in a situation of illicit enrichment. Now the Russian legal field has begun to develop due to the fact that the OECD monitors the implementation of this convention by Russia and, among other things, makes remarks that our officials are formally protected, while all other persons are not protected. With this draft law, Russia decided to expand the circle of persons by including the protection of applicants in the private sector. Accordingly, she closed the “hole” that concerned employees of state companies and state corporations, because formally they are not officials. A clause was made under which these people would be given protection.

But in addition to the written bills, there is also law enforcement, concludes Shumanov. The created system, according to him, will not work: “Even being in government, people cannot protect themselves by reporting corruption.”