GORKI, March 13 (Itar-Tass) —— Presidential Administration Head Sergei Ivanov says he will fight the Russian gift making tradition.
The national anti-corruption plan signed by President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday aims to form a negative public attitude to making gifts. “I have been a public officer for 13 years and have travelled to Russian regions a lot. I know well this bad gift making habit. This habit must be discouraged and gifts must not be accepted,” he said.
In the words of Ivanov, he opened a museum of gifts in his being the defense minister. “People in an African country tried to give me an elephant tusk decorated with diamonds and emeralds. I said I could not accept a gift of more than 3,000 rubles, but they told me: “What is the problem? We will give you a 300-ruble receipt!” he said.
Ivanov said that he had gotten accustomed to posting annual income declarations. “Everything is more or less OK on the federal level, but problems happen on the regional and municipal levels when local specialists are unable to evaluate income declarations and a correlation between incomes and spending,” he said.
That is why, the national anti-corruption plan has a special provision concerning the training of professional personnel in regions, he said.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office was ordered at the Tuesday meeting of the Anti-Corruption Council to present annual anti-corruption reports, Ivanov said.