Impersonal income – Newspaper Kommersant No. 12 (7457) dated 01/24/2023

On Monday, the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation recommended for adoption in the second reading a bill on the actual abolition of the annual declaration of income and property for regional and municipal deputies working on a voluntary basis. However, among the quite expected amendments (for example, banning speakers of regional legislative assemblies from working on a non-permanent basis), the committee unexpectedly approved also previously unannounced changes related to federal parliamentarians. The main of these innovations gives the right to the Duma and the Federation Council to prohibit the publication of declarations of deputies and senators, limiting themselves only to generalized statistical information.

A package of amendments to the laws “On the General Principles of Organizing Public Power in the Subjects of the Russian Federation” and “On Combating Corruption” were submitted to the Duma on December 1 by Andrey Klishas and Pavel Krasheninnikov (United Russia), as well as Duma deputies Valery Gartung (“A Just Russia – For Truth”) and Alexei Didenko (LDPR).

According to this draft, deputies of regional and municipal parliaments exercising their powers “on the job” will file income declarations “within four months from the date of election”, and after that – only in the event of a major transaction exceeding the total the income of the legislator and his wife for the previous three years.

Now such a procedure is provided for deputies of rural settlements. In addition, information on the income of all regional deputies (including paid ones) will be published on the websites of legislative bodies only in a generalized form, without indicating personal data.

Even when considering the bill in the first reading, the deputies from the Communist Party drew attention to the fact that now in 11 regions the chairmen of legislative bodies have the right to work on a voluntary basis, and proposed that they retain the obligation to submit declarations. Pavel Krasheninnikov agreed that there was a reason for this and asked the Communists to prepare the corresponding amendments for the second reading. As a result, the committee approved the amendment of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation that the chairmen of regional parliaments can only work on a professional basis. This rule will come into force after the end of the terms of office of the speakers, who are now working on a non-professional basis.

At the same time, the committee recommended for adoption an amendment to the Liberal Democratic Party, according to which the absence of a regional or municipal deputy at meetings without good reason for six months in a row will become the basis for the early termination of his powers. The terms of “truancy” will begin to be calculated after the entry into force of the law (March 1, 2023). The Liberal Democrats substantiated this initiative with appeals received from those regions where there are deputies who have already left Russia, but the law does not allow depriving them of their powers.

The main surprise was the amendment introduced by all three co-sponsors of the bill and proposing to extend the norm on the limited publication of information about income to federal parliamentarians.

According to the current law “On the status of a senator of the Russian Federation and a deputy of the State Duma”, annual declarations of deputies and senators, as well as information about their submission of “knowingly false or incomplete information” about income and property, are posted on the websites of these bodies in the manner determined by the relevant chamber. Now, on these sites, it is proposed to publish only “generalized information about the performance (improper performance)” by parliamentarians of their obligations to declare income and property, and these publications should not contain “personal data that allows identifying the relevant person” or “individualize the property belonging to the relevant person “. And the issue of the procedure for “providing access” to the submitted declarations, as well as to information about the “deliberately false information” identified in them, will be decided by the parliamentarians themselves.

“Personal data, including those of public persons, must be protected. We are talking about municipal and regional deputies, State Duma deputies and senators. Specific declarations will not be published, but generalized data on all deputies of a particular legislative body will be published. In what order they will be published will be decided either by the law of the subject of the federation, or, if we are talking about the chambers of the Federal Assembly, by their regulations, ”Pavel Krasheninnikov explained to Kommersant. When asked whether, by analogy, the publication of declarations of members of the government would also be stopped, he replied that this draft law is dedicated to representative bodies, but “perhaps in the future such a procedure will be adopted for other public figures.”

The first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Construction, Yuri Sinelshchikov (KPRF), told Kommersant that so far access to the declarations has not been closed, “but, apparently, this is still ahead.” “For the closure, it will still be necessary to adopt regulations – amendments to the regulations of the State Duma and the Federation Council,” the communist noted. The deputies will consider the bill in the second reading already on January 24, and its third reading is scheduled for the next day.

With the adoption of the proposed amendments, the system of accountability of deputies to citizens is actually coming to naught, states the director of Transparency International – Russia, Ilya Shumanov (both the organization and Mr. Shumanov himself are included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents).

In his opinion, such changes allow the State Duma and the Federation Council to refuse to publish the declarations of parliamentarians and publish “emasculated data” that will not say anything to either experts or even the deputies themselves.

The Duma Commission for Controlling the Income of Deputies had previously been engaged in “minimizing corruption scandals initiated by third-party actors,” but now even initiating an audit will become almost impossible, the expert notes. He recalls that it all started two years ago with the deputies of rural settlements, who were allowed not to publish their incomes, because “in the villages they don’t know how to fill out declarations and there is no Internet there.” Six months ago, a bill was introduced that allowed regional deputies working on a non-permanent basis not to publish their income. At the end of 2022, the president, by his decree, freed the participants of the special military operation from the obligation to declare income, and all other civil servants from the need to publish them (at least until the end of the special operation). Now they have reached the federal parliamentarians, but this is not the limit, Mr. Shumanov predicts: “I bet that after the end of the military campaign in Ukraine, the declaration of income will not be returned back.” In fact, he sums up, it is about creating a new privilege for “sovereign people” – they are no longer accountable to society.

Political scientist Aleksey Makarkin agrees that the loyal elite will receive the main bonuses from the new anti-corruption policy: now it is protected from revelations, which, from the point of view of the authorities, are organized by “all sorts of agents and other enemies.” “In fact, we are returning to the Soviet model of fighting corruption, which was supposed to be dealt with only by law enforcement agencies,” the expert explains. “It was also allowed to complain to the party and to the Pravda newspaper. On the other hand, sociological measurements show that the fight against corruption has not justified itself as a tool to increase the popularity of power among the people: targeted plantings do not convince anyone and are perceived as an accident, and people always want and expect more.”

Ksenia Veretennikova, Anastasia Kornya