Exposed Corruption up 40% in 2011 – Russian Prosecutors

The number of exposed “corruption violations” increased almost 40 percent in Russia last year, but less graft cases reached courts than in 2010, prosecutors said.

More than 310,000 violations were exposed in 2011, largely due to Kremlin-ordered checks of income declarations disclosed by state officials, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a report cited by Vedomosti daily on Tuesday.

But the number of criminal cases opened on the violations only grew 8 percent year-on-year, while the figure for cases handed over to courts actually decreased 4 percent to some 11,900, the report said.

At the same time, the prosecutors filed 40 percent more protests, charged more officials with administrative offenses (a growth of 46 percent from 2010) and sued to have more graft deals by bureaucrats annulled (an increase of 39 percent).

The Prosecutor General’s Office did not comment on the report, which was not officially publicized. Analysts cited by the daily said the alleged clampdown on corruption remains de-facto stalled because it is being carried out by the very bureaucratic system that is to be investigated as part of it.

Russia ranked 143rd out of 182 countries in the latest edition of the annual global corruption survey published in December by Transparency International.

 

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