Officials will not be skinned yet – Kommersant

Scientists and lawyers discussed ways to fight corruption within the XII Eurasian Anti-Corruption Forum. Until recently, a “Eurocentric” approach to anti-corruption legislation and a focus on criminal practices prevailed in national legislation and practice. Now the emphasis is on control over the expenses of civil servants, confiscation of property of corrupt officials and compensation for the damage caused by them, the prosecutor’s office said. Chinese colleagues of Russian lawyers also contributed to the discussion, recalling the flaying of stealing officials, which was practiced in their country. However, according to them, the use of this method did not lead to a decrease in corruption.

Last year, prosecutors identified 105,500 violators of anti-corruption prohibitions and disciplined almost 52,000 people, of whom 519 were fired for loss of confidence. Aslan Yusufov, Deputy Head of the Department for Supervision of the Implementation of Anti-Corruption Legislation of the Prosecutor General’s Office, spoke about this, speaking at the Eurasian Anti-Corruption Forum on Wednesday. According to him, the lion’s share – more than 99 thousand – violations associated with the presentation of information about income and property, ten times less often officials were caught lying about expenses. 3,907 violations relate to an unresolved conflict of interest. Failure to notify about the inclination to corruption (321 cases) and the presence of deposits in foreign banks (77) are still rather exotic. Also, officials were not very often convicted of participating in entrepreneurial activities – only 308 such cases were recorded.

Until recently, the anti-corruption legislation and law enforcement practice was dominated by a “Eurocentric” approach, Mr. Yusufov admitted: they focused primarily on European anti-corruption standards, borrowing them primarily from the relevant convention of the Council of Europe. But today Russia has come out of it, and much needs to be rethought, the prosecutor admitted – in particular, now the emphasis is on preventive measures and the experience of “like-minded people” from Brazil, India and China.

The main mechanism for preventing corruption is now the sphere of control over the expenses of officials, explained Aslan Yusufov.

And in this area, the supervisory authority has managed to achieve significant success: over the past two years, work on turning suspicious property of officials into state revenue has significantly intensified. Last year alone, prosecutors filed 4,364 lawsuits for 300.8 billion rubles with the courts. and won 3173 of them for 258.9 billion rubles. “We are not fighting petty manifestations here at the everyday level: those people who have multibillion-dollar fortunes – it is obvious that these are not those fortunes that have been acquired in a righteous way,” the prosecutor stated. According to him, another promising area of ​​work is compensation for damages from corruption crimes: in two years, the amount of property seized as part of pre-trial measures exceeded the cost of the damage caused. “The law enforcement system in this area works more smoothly than ever, and even at the stage of operational search activities, a large number of measures are taken to arrest and seize property,” the prosecutor reported. Last year, 1,427 lawsuits were sent to the courts to recover damages caused by acts of corruption in the amount of 4.7 billion rubles, in the first quarter of this year – 400 lawsuits for 1.5 billion rubles.

Deputy Labor Minister Andrey Pudov (it is this department that is responsible for developing anti-corruption standards) presented the forum participants with an updated overview of the practice of bringing to justice officials who have made a mistake. The document clarifies what should be considered a serious violation, and what is insignificant and unpunished – such as the absence in the declaration of information about a dilapidated private house located in an average garden partnership, or a gift worth up to 10 thousand rubles. The Ministry of Labor also clarifies that the involvement of a lawyer or a lawyer during an inspection by an employee cannot serve as confirmation of the violation itself. But the presence of a share in an investment fund that attracts foreign financial instruments is such. However, this does not need to be fired, the Ministry of Labor warns, if the official realized the misconduct in time and got rid of the share in such a fund. The Deputy Minister also said that his department is preparing guidelines on how to declare digital assets (officials must report on the availability of cryptocurrencies from 2021).

Director of the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Mo Jihong said that corruption should be seen as a social phenomenon inextricably linked with power.

He recalled that in his country, the first attempts to fight corruption date back to the beginning of the Ming Dynasty – its first emperor had a habit of flaying officials who were still alive. However, history shows that this measure did not have a serious impact on the level of corruption, summed up a lawyer from China.

Anastasia Kornya