Russia will regulate the fight against corruption primarily by its own laws

Russia withdraws from the Council of Europe (CE) Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, a draft law on its denunciation was submitted to the State Duma by President Vladimir Putin. Moscow is doing this in connection with the decision adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in March 2022 to terminate Russia’s membership in the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). Then Russia lost the right to participate in the “discussion or adoption of reports” on the state of corruption in the country, but the Council of Europe continued to monitor this. “In order to take measures aimed at preventing discriminatory treatment of the Russian Federation within the framework of the GRECO evaluation mechanisms, it is proposed to denounce the convention and terminate the participation of the Russian Federation in GRECO,” Putin writes in an explanatory note to the bill.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that because of this step, Russia may have “certain difficulties” with the mutual extradition of suspects and accused between countries (collecting evidence and exchanging it becomes more difficult. – Vedomosti), but on the situation with the fight against bribery in the country is, according to him, will not affect. “We have very, very strict legislation. The whole system works. Naturally, it cannot be said that [коррупцию] managed to be eradicated, it has not been eradicated anywhere in the world. But this is not campaigning, but these are consistent long-term actions that will continue,” he said. For example, Alexander Brod, a member of the Human Rights Council, has already stated after the introduction of the bill that Russia has its own National Anti-Corruption Plan for 2021-2024. (approved by decree of the head of state).

The denunciation of the convention may have a negative impact on obtaining the necessary information and evidence for the investigation of corruption crimes, Nikita Filippov, head of the De Jure Law Office, told Vedomosti. At the same time, the obligations of the member states stipulated by the convention to adopt changes at the national level on the criminalization of acts of corruption by Russia have already been fulfilled. “Our legislation has introduced many offenses providing for liability for acts related to bribery of officials in both the public and private sectors,” he explained. Despite withdrawing from the CE Convention, Russia is still a party to the UN Convention against Corruption, although for many years Moscow has not ratified its art. 20 (on criminal liability for illicit enrichment).

The CoE Convention, still in force, was signed in Strasbourg on January 27, 1999: GRECO establishes anti-corruption standards for the activities of the state and monitors the compliance of practice with these standards. The group helps to identify gaps in the national anti-corruption policy and proposes the necessary legislative, institutional or operational measures. It includes not only members of the Council of Europe, but also, say, the United States.

For example, in accordance with the CE Convention, President Dmitry Medvedev adopted and signed the law “On Combating Corruption”, according to which civil servants and members of their families are required to provide information on income, property and property obligations. Some exceptions have already been made in connection with the military special operation, so the denunciation of the convention is not the first step: on December 29, 2022, President Putin signed a decree allowing the security forces and other persons who work on the territory of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions not to publish declarations.

“The obvious purpose of the decree is to create legal grounds for not filing income and expense declarations for those who, in principle, cannot file them while being on the front line or in another zone on the territory where the SVO is being held,” the head of the Duma Labor Committee told Vedomosti. , Social Policy and Veterans Affairs Yaroslav Nilov (LDPR). And such a “reasonable deviation from the rules will not entail legal consequences,” he emphasizes. In fact, the presidential decree is not only about combatants, Alexei Karnaukhov, head of the center for anti-corruption policy of the Yabloko party, told Vedomosti. This includes, among other things, “persons replacing positions” in the service. In fact, it can be any officials, both regional and federal, who are related to the implementation of tasks in new regions.

In addition, GRECO issued reports on the level of bribery. In 2019 (in the latest report), the agency wrote that GRECO recognized that Russia had implemented nine of its 22 recommendations to prevent corruption, in particular “among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors.” Among other things, GRECO recommended strengthening the system for declaring the income of State Duma deputies, members of the Federation Council and judges and increasing its transparency. The rules for publishing income declarations are being adjusted, but the amendment bill does not cover certain types of income, such as dividends and investments, GRECO noted.

“The Convention was a kind of standard that Russian legislators were guided by when developing a regulatory framework related to corruption crimes,” says Ilya Shumanov, Director General of Transparency International – Russia (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation). He expects “further sovereignization” of the Russian anti-corruption policy after the denunciation of the CoE Convention.

There will be fewer and fewer methods of struggle that ensure transparency and accountability of the authorities to the society, on which the European system of combating corruption is built. At the same time, the fight against specific corrupt officials will be intensified, on which the Asian system of counteraction is built. In this regard, the expert predicts the tightening of penalties in Russia through certain articles of the Criminal Code.

GRECO reports can be perceived as “healing monitoring”, says Karnaukhov: “Regular rounds of evaluations based on the convention helped to improve our legal system.” The system for monitoring the implementation of the convention, under which Russian criminal anti-corruption legislation was imprisoned, has disappeared, says Shumanov.

Daria Mosolkina and Evgenia Dubrovina contributed to the preparation of the article