The State Duma has promised again to detect and defeat the corrupted officials. Tuesday Vladimir Kolesnikov, a United Russia member and former deputy prosecutor general, stated that a package of bills would appear during the spring Duma session while the loud counter-corruption cases would be continued. A day before that the Untied Russia panel had suggested to form a parliamentary commission for struggle against corruption.     

The commission is planned to be made up in April. It will include two members from each faction and sub-faction. As it’s only United Russia to have four sub-factions, that means it will be represented with 8 staff fighters against corruption. Along with that the United Russia leadership has advised their colleagues not to confuse their powers with those by executive authority. They should concentrate on searching for corruption-prompting points in the legislature instead of trying to collect “compromising materials” on particular figures, as this is what the Kremlin itself is going to do.  

The unlucky counter-corruption bill has been discussed for 15 years already. All this time, Russian law-makers haven’t been able to define what “corruption” is. However, the situation changed after President’s assistant Viktor Ivanov set about seeing into the bill. It was him to head the working group on counter-acting the corruption created after ratification by Russia the UN Convention against corruption and that by Council of Europe setting the criminal liability for corruption.

Mikhail Grishankov, who headed the counter-corruption panel in the Duma of previous convocation, began to inform actively in January that a package of counter-corruption laws is almost prepared. According to him, it is a separate bill “On counteracting corruption” and a number of amendments in the laws about police, prosecution bodies, FSB, Criminal and Labour Codes. The authors suggest forming a single counter-corruption body responsible for struggling with corruption in Russia. Also promised are imposing of obligatory declaration by officials their properties and that of their relatives; control over transactions made by government officials and their relatives; transparency purchases made for municipal and state needs; guarantees of inviolability for those helping the struggle with corruption. For the first time it is going to establish the criminal liability for corruption-related violations up to confiscation of properties.     

The expert’s attitude towards promises by law-makers is rather skeptical. Kirill Kabanov, the head of the National Counter-corruption Committee said to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent “This package is just fulfillment of obligations taken after ratification of the international conventions. However, forming additional special service without clearly formulated counter-corruption policy would be ineffective. The corruptive market is over $300 bn a year and it can have just anyone. With the struggle going on about forming a counter-corruption body, of course, the law enforcement top brass want to get control over it”.