Good, but not so much: authorities announce new anti-corruption measures

According to this law, the authorities can confiscate not only the property of officials who have fined, but also money in bank accounts and other financial instruments, if the amount exceeds the income of a civil servant over the past three years.

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

If an official has more money than he and his wife earned in three years, and he cannot explain their origin, the savings will be withdrawn in favor of the state. The new bill gives the Prosecutor General and the prosecutors subordinate to him the right to check the reliability of the information provided to civil servants about the legality of receiving funds in accounts or other financial instruments. Not only the official himself falls under the law, but also his wife and minor children.

Now, according to anti-corruption legislation, only land plots, real estate, cars and securities are subject to confiscation.

Economist Igor Nikolayev believes that this measure is correct, but it is not a complex solution. For example, what to do with former officials who "went" to the civil service, and after a while it turns out that they are "big businessmen"?

"It is necessary to introduce a life-long declaration so that people know: the civil service has its advantages, but also disadvantages, that you will be accountable all your life. And so to go and make money, and then legalize, it will not work. And then 10 times you need to think about whether it is worth going, and for them the institution of confiscation should work", - says Igor Nikolayev.

There are other claims to the new bill. For example, only wives or husbands and minor children are included in the family of an official. Anti-corruption expert Yelena Panfilova is familiar not only with the law itself, but also with the history of its creation:

"This law is an extremely short version. Initially, it was assumed that a wide range of relatives would be considered family members, for example, for the purposes of anti-money laundering legislation, relatives are considered to be fathers-mothers, siblings, and adult children. And for the purposes of corruption legislation, when everyone understood that there was such a great opportunity to register any property and enterprises on adult children, it could fail, then only wives and minor children remained. But in fact, no one writes anything on them".

The confiscation of products of illicit enrichment is a proven method in the fight against "top" corruption, which cannot be detected through operational-search measures, says Yelena Panfilova. It's a good news.

“The bad news is that everything is done in a non-transparent manner. In the part of the legislation that concerns the confiscation of property, we as a society hear something that they reveal something, confiscate something, but by and large, we do not have objective information on how this norm works", - Yelena Panfilova is sure.

At one time, Russia refused to ratify Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption. This article just says that countries should introduce criminal liability against officials if they have property and any other assets that exceed the officially declared ones, and civil servants cannot justify them in a reasonable way. 15 years ago, such a norm was considered politically unacceptable, because, according to the Russian authorities, it contradicts the principle of the presumption of innocence - the burden of proving guilt is shifted to the person who is accused of this crime.

"De facto, the rules on confiscation are the embodiment of Article 20, because officials also need to prove where they got the lost funds and assets that exceed their three-year declaration. That is, it turns out that the presumption of innocence does not interfere in this case. I think that this is a 50/50 desire to take under the bridle the elite who have roamed and are still walking in the corruption ecstasy, and on the other hand, yes, this is populism", - says Yelena Panfilova.

Experts say that the authorities are now very concerned about the upcoming elections to the State Duma. All ratings show that the positions of United Russia are weakening. Even according to the version of the loyal VTsIOM, the ruling party has slipped below 30% of the mark, Igor Nikolayev is sure that such a bill did not appear by chance:

"This is one of the initiatives that is designed to support the ratings of the authorities on the eve of the elections to the State Duma. The topic of corruption is undoubtedly popular, especially since it remains relevant, as we can see. It is clear when Crimea happened and the ratings rose. What to do now? The retirement age cannot be returned back. Then we made a mistake, it was wrong to raise it, this is what brought down the rating. After that, he continued to gradually decline, although they will come up with something on the topic of pensions. I think this will be related to the indexation of pensions for working pensioners".

Yelena Panfilova thinks that the new initiative is aimed at keeping the elite in good shape. Last week, the president said that he will pay special attention to the fight against corruption, especially in the implementation of national projects. But as a pre-election topic, the government likes to raise the fight against corruption at elections. If you go to any news site, you can see that officials are imprisoned in Russia every day. Governors, law enforcement officers, mayors, ministerial officials - they are innumerable. Millions under the bed of Colonel Zakharchenko and Governor Belozertsev will lead voters to the candidate who will write the words "No corruption!" On his banner. Moreover, the authorities themselves determine which of the officials ends up in the millstones of justice.

"Thus, the state retains a complete monopoly on the disposal of information about how the practice of anti-corruption activities is going on and who is involved. There is a chance that they will begin to catch all sorts of small ones - principals of schools, hospitals and so on, who have not declared something small, and large stories will fall out of control".

Experts point out that the new law does not stipulate how regular information on how this legal norm is being implemented will be available to the public.