Little bribes – Kommersant
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Experts from the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law (IZiSP) under the Government of the Russian Federation analyzed the practice of dismissing officials due to loss of confidence and compiled a portrait of a typical bribery organization. This is a small limited liability company established in 2013-2019 in the Central or Volga Federal District, engaged in construction or trade and having a staff of one to ten employees. The study of ISiSP will be presented at the Eurasian Anti-Corruption Forum, which will be held on Wednesday in Moscow.
The “Portrait of a Briber” was compiled based on an analysis of the Unified Register of Procurement Participants Held Administratively Liable for Corruption (Article 19.28 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), in which, by the end of 2022, there were data on 555 violators. Almost 40% of them have the status of a micro-enterprise, another 16.2% – a small one. Only 3.4% of violators belong to medium-sized businesses.
It is no coincidence that small enterprises with up to ten employees turned out to be the main bribe-givers, says Yury Truntsevsky, head of the IZiSP anti-corruption methodology department and one of the authors of the study. According to scientists, this is due, among other things, to the lack of opportunities for such companies to focus on pursuing an anti-corruption policy – for example, create a special unit or assign an employee who would monitor compliance with relevant requirements and rules. An alternative would be to connect small enterprises to anti-corruption compliance (a set of measures to ensure that the company’s activities comply with the requirements of established legislation) of large enterprises – for example, if they are their contractors – or even create a special information platform that would allow enterprises to upload their digital profile and track the main corruption risks, says Mr. Truntsevsky. “In the event of a violation, we propose not to immediately include the enterprise in the register, which closes its access to participation in public procurement, but, for example, at first simply fine it, but at the same time forcibly connect it to anti-corruption compliance,” the scientist explains. According to him, situations are now not uncommon when organizations that have received a state contract cannot fulfill it due to the fact that they suddenly found themselves held accountable for corruption.
Also, the object of the study was the register of officials dismissed due to loss of confidence: scientists expect that such data will help the regions evaluate the effectiveness of their anti-corruption practices. By law, this register includes the data of employees and employees of state corporations dismissed for gross violations in declaring property and income (more exotic reasons are failure to notify management of a conflict of interest or a bribe offer).
The number of persons entered in the register in recent years has increased several times, note in IZiSP: if in 2016 corruption offenses became the basis for the dismissal of 383 officials, then in 2019 – already 1150, and as of November 2022, the register contained information in relation to more than 3490 people. Among the main violators were municipal deputies – 40.8% of all persons involved in the register. In second place are employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (21%), another 16% are state and municipal employees. At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was most often fired due to the loss of confidence of traffic police officers (29.9%) and heads of departments or their deputies (17.2%). Less often – detectives, ordinary policemen and district inspectors, very rarely – investigators. A quarter (24.9%) of all dismissals for loss of confidence occurred in five regions: Omsk and Sverdlovsk regions, Moscow, Krasnodar Territory and Bashkiria. The lowest rates were shown by the Kurgan and Bryansk regions, the Chukotka and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, as well as Chechnya.
Anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov (included in the register of foreign agents) is not surprised that municipal deputies are leading among those dismissed for false declarations. He explains this by the low level of legal literacy of local elected officials, who in the end were generally relieved of the obligation to declare their income. Recall that at the beginning of 2023, the State Duma adopted amendments on the actual abolition of the annual declaration of income for regional and municipal deputies working on a voluntary basis. Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the Duma Committee on Legislation, directly complained about the shortage of candidates for deputies in the field because of the reluctance of people to submit declarations.
Similar problems arise for small businesses, Mr. Shumanov continues: if large companies have their representatives in legislative assemblies, strong legal services and access to licensing, certification, etc. systems, then small enterprises simply cannot afford this. In addition, the expert notes that construction and trade are the areas of activity that are most subject to various inspections.
Meanwhile, as follows from the data of judicial statistics published recently for 2022, the number of sentences handed down in corruption cases last year increased by a third compared to the previous year, from 15.2 thousand to 20.6 thousand. This is the highest figure over the past 10 years. Law enforcement officers approached him close only in 2016 (then the courts passed 19.9 thousand sentences), but after that, for several years, the numbers declined, and a turning point, along with an increase in the number of cases coming to the courts, was outlined only in 2021 . Traditionally, giving and receiving a bribe remain the most common crime: they account for half of all sentences (10.1 thousand). Moreover, petty bribe-takers were most often tried – 4232 sentences were associated with amounts up to 10 thousand rubles.
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