Today the Russia’s Investigative Committee has held an on-site meeting of the RF State Duma Committee on security and anti-corruption activity. The subject of the meeting was amendments to the laws in the area of revealing, suppression and investigation of acts of corruption. The meeting was attended by Chairperson of the State Duma Committee Irina Yarovaya and her deputy Ernest Valeyev, Chairman of the Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, his deputies and heads of divisions of the Central Office, and State Duma deputies.
Irina Yarovaya noted that “today the state makes everything possible to provide law enforcement, including the Investigative Committee, with sufficient legal instruments to fight corruption”. “Over the past years, to a large extent thanks to the efforts of the Russia’s Investigative Committee, a larger number of acts of corruption have been revealed in Russia, criminal cases have been opened and investigations are underway. It is no doubt a very complicated category of criminal cases requiring not only special professional expertise, but poses certain technical difficulties in proving the guilt and necessity to make the most complex analyses,” – said Ms. Yarovaya.
In his speech Chairman of the Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin outlined the results of the Committee’s work in investigating acts of corruption, pointing out that “since 2011 the Investigative Committee has launched 57 thousand criminal cases in corruption and 22 thousand have been forwarded to court to be tried on the merits”.
During the meeting the Chairman of the Investigative Committee reminded about the initiatives offered by the Committee earlier, including adoption of objective truth, criminal liability of legal persons, counteraction to possible abuses in privatization of state property, counteraction to withdrawal of the capital abroad through sham companies, fight against financial pyramids and others. Answering the deputies’ questions Mr. Bastrykin gave arguments for urgency of such initiatives. He also stressed a number of problems in criminal and criminal procedure legislation, which being solved will allow more efficient investigations. Namely, the Chairman stated a fact that “investigators have to deal with such complicated corruption schemes, they have never dealt with before”. Therefore, the Chairman offered to consider possible extension of term for preliminary investigation in complicated cases with many counts.
First Vice-Chairman of the Russia’s Investigative Committee Vasily Piskaryov proposed to discuss changing the procedure of studying the criminal cases under article 217 of the RF Criminal Procedure Code, offering to cancel the presence of an investigator when the accused and their lawyers are studying the files and give them copies of the files for studying, which has been in practice abroad.
Other officers of the Central Office of the Russia’s Investigative Committee made a number of proposes relating to social security of the Committee’s personnel and elimination of contradictions in the norms of the RF Criminal Procedure Code regulating the procedure of criminal proceedings against persons with special legal status.
At the conclusion of the meeting it was decided to analyze all the initiatives in detail and to consider their joint implementation.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
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