The Russian leadership and executive authorities made public the declarations of their family incomes and property on Thursday. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earned again more than President Dmitry Medvedev, but less than his deputies. However, the financial position of the president and the prime minister almost did not change.
For 2011 Dmitry Medvedev earned 3,371,353,27 roubles, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily cited the data. The annual income of the president went down 7,300 roubles. In 2011 Vladimir Putin lost 1,380,000 roubles. His income went down at this sum as compared with 2010. Then the prime minister earned 5.042 million roubles and 3.662 million roubles in 2011.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin turned out to be the richest official in the government, as the latter earned 484 million roubles in 2011, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reports. He feels all right with several premium class cars. He also has a land plot in Italy. Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Yuri Trutnev is coming second with 211 million roubles. Sport Minister Vitaly Mutko is coming far behind with 17 million roubles. All other members of the government earned less than ten million roubles each.
According to the declarations, which the presidential administration and the government made public on Thursday, the salaries of Kremlin officials went up 5-10% on average and the salaries of officials from the Russian White House went down more than 20% in the previous year, the Vedomosti reports.
Service bonuses, monthly and yearly allowances were reduced for all members of the government, but their salaries remained unchanged, press secretary of the prime minister Dmitry Peskov explained to the newspaper. The salary was not raised in the presidential administration, an official of the presidential administration said. The salaries could grow thanks to the bonuses from saved labour payment fund, he believes. The official of the presidential administration did not comment on higher salaries of the officials.
Official incomes and the prices of purchases will play the main role in the control over the expenditures of officials under the presidential bill, which Dmitry Medvedev submitted in the State Duma in early April, the Kommersant daily recalls. He assumed that the committees over the control for expenditures and the settlement of the conflict of interests will check the deals and the sources of incomes, if they get “the sufficient information”, that the public servants have effected a deal at the cost, which exceeds his or her three-year family income.
Citizens, public movements and political parties seem to be sick and tired of looking into other pockets, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily notes. Now all people want to know how their chiefs spend the money. The president submitted the relevant package of bills over the control for the compliance of the incomes of officials with their expenses in the State Duma in the previous week. His critical remarks are getting sharper and even the ruling party is discontent.
The CPRF, the LDPR, Yabloko, Right Cause, Patriots of Russia and several unregistered parties believe that Medvedev’s initiative is suitable as the first step, the newspaper notes. The range of officials under control is determined incorrectly in the initiative, the list of declared buys is limited with real estate, cars and securities, the list of relatives, which should be also checked, is too short.
The declarations should include the price of bought property and all savings of any kind, and not only banking accounts as now, the RBC daily cited an expert of Transparency International Ivan Ninenko as saying. The transition to the electronic database will also bring some results, “Should we have a system similar to that in Latvia, it could have been possible to process the declarations automatically for their corruption risks and examine how the incomes and flats of some officials changed. Now we have to do it almost manually,” Ninenko said with regret.