The Russian government is taking under control the income and expenditure of the management of 29 institutions that are one way or another federally funded. The corresponding resolution was signed on Monday by Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The list of institutions includes companies, state-run corporations, non-budgetary foundations, universities and staff of the Public Chamber. Their senior managers already for some years have been declaring their income, as well as the income of their spouses and minor children, and now their expenditure will also be controlled. The deputy heads of the agencies and their chief accountants from now on will also submit the relevant information to the government’s civil service and personnel department.
The Kommersant daily reports that the list includes JSC Russian Railways (RZD), three state-run corporations, six universities, three research institutes, three research centres, two research foundations, independent NGOs and other agencies. The heads of almost all of these structures have been regularly declaring their income and property (together with the income of the spouses and minor children) since the Law “On Combating Corruption” was adopted in 2008.
The list of organisations, endorsed by Dmitry Medvedev, was prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development (MED). Experts of the ministry on Monday declined to specify the selection criteria for the list.
By its Monday’s decision the government obligated the senior managers, their deputies and chief accountants to declare not only their income, but also expenditure. The same will apply to the expenditure of their spouses and minor children. All this information, says the government’s resolution, will be “confidential if by the federal law it is not classified as information constituting state secret.”
“We have never filed any declarations of income or expenditure, because employees of our agency are not civil servants, although our founder is the government,” Director General of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) Andrei Nikitin told the Kommersant daily. According to him, the ASI employees “have absolutely nothing to hide” and they will comply with the norms “specified in the decree.”
Director of the Russian Humanities Research Foundation Anatoly Shcherbak said that his institution had received the order to submit the declarations to the government in March. And so he and other leaders of the foundation did in April this year. “I have not acquired apartments, cars and yachts with aircraft, so I have no fear to submit the documents,” said Shcherbak.
“All of these organisations in some way or other receive federal funds or redistribute these funds,” member of the Public Chamber, Chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee Kirill Kabanov said. He believes that the resolution is “a logical anti-corruption step” of the government, which has decided to control the senior managers “not on the professional basis, but on the criteria of factual participation in public administration.”
Ex-governor of Tula region convicted for corruption
On Monday, the former governor of the Tula Region, Vyacheslav Dudka, was sentenced to 9.5 years in a high-security penal colony. The court found him guilty of receiving 40 million roubles from GRINN Corporation for the allocation of a land plot for the construction of a hypermarket. In addition, Dudka was deprived of all state awards and titles.
The court found that in the spring of 2010, Vyacheslav Dudka entered into an agreement with former Director of the Department of Property and Land Relations Viktor Volkov and through an intermediary received a bribe of 40 million roubles from the managing director of JSC Corporation GRINN, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper specifies. In return he was to get land (2.5 ha) on lease for building a hypermarket. In telephone conversations the accomplices used code talk - for example, they called money the “thesis.”
The version of defendant Dudka that for various violations he had long wanted to fire Volkov, and Volkov in the end decided to get the money and when he was caught, put the blame on him, was not confirmed by the court, the Kommersant daily writes. The court sentenced Viktor Volkov to 2.5 years’ imprisonment for his help to the investigation. The convict was immediately released because he has served the term under house arrest and in detention during the preliminary investigation. Dudka, who was sentenced to 9.5 years’ imprisonment, was taken into custody in the courtroom. In addition, Dudka was stripped of all state awards, including the Order of Honour and the Medal For Combat Services. The seized 40 million roubles were forfeited to the state.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper notes that even before the verdict was announced both Vyacheslav Dudka and his lawyer said they did not expect an acquittal and in any case would appeal the court ruling in the Tula Regional Court, and if need be, will turn to the ECHR.