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The Russia’s Investigative Committee has summarized the efforts in fighting corruption over 9 months of 2014.

From the moment when the Russia’s Investigative Committee was established the efforts of law enforcement to fight against corruption have become more active allowing achieving positive results in revealing and preventing acts of corruption as well as reducing the rate of such crimes. Thus, this year the investigating bodies of the Russia’s Investigative Committee have considered over 32.5 thousand reports on the acts of corruption and initiated 21,137 criminal cases.

Over 9 months of this year investigators have held inquiries in 26,088 criminal cases over acts of corruption, 10,233 of them have been finished. In the total number of cases sent to court, most were opened in bribery, frauds, misappropriation, embezzlement and abuse of office.

The committee investigated criminal cases over corruption crimes committed by people under the so-called “special legal status”, from which 22 police investigators, 1 investigator or the State Federal Drug Control Service, 10 prosecutors, 40 lawyers, 32 members of electoral commissions, 139 deputies of local governments, 188 elective officials of local governments, 9 deputies of legislative authority and 2 judges were prosecuted.

In addition, investigating bodies investigated criminal cases against hundreds of officials across the country, including high-ranking ones.

This way criminal cases were sent to court against deputy mayor of the town of Chita Vyacheslav Shulyakovsky, who being the head of tender commission handling buying flats for orphans had received from employees and top managers of real estate firms Domaks and Creditline bribes for ensuring their victories in auctions on buying flats for orphans by the town administration; first deputy head of Novosibirsk Region administration Arnold Shalmuyev, who had stolen 22 million rubles allocated from the federal budget on road construction. Courts are hearing cases against former deputy of Omsk city council of deputies Alexander Dmitriyev, who had committed 86 counts of fraud and former head of the village of Kutuzovskoye, Solnechnogorsk District, Moscow Region Anatoly Streltsov, who together with former deputy head of Solnechnogorsk Office of the Cadaster Chamber Yelena Koveshnikova had stolen 990 thousand rubles by selling 8 pieces of land that he had illegally registered on the names of his relatives.

The measures taken by investigating bodies have allowed implementing the principle of unavoidable punishment for committing acts of corruption.

This way, a court sentenced former head of Stavropol city administration Igor Bestuzhy to 9 years to be served in a maximum-security penal colony and a fire of 500 million rubles for taking a bribe of over 50 million rubles for letting on lease a piece of land 50 ha in area. Former head of Engels District, Saratov Region Mikhail Lysenko is serving 7.5 years in a maximum-security penal colony for taking a bribe of over 92 million rubles for assisting representatives of a commercial organization with allocation of land. A court gave former deputy mayor of the city of Yaroslavl Yevgeny Rozanov 5 years in prison and a fine of 5 million rubles for taking a bribe of 1 million rubles for assisting in extending a lease agreement of a property under state ownership.

In addition, a court recognized the evidence gathered by the Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee sufficient to convict former mayor of the town of Astrakhan Mikhail Stolyarov, who had received a bribe of 10 million rubles from representative of a commercial organization for letting on lease a plot of land. The court sentenced him to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500 million rubles.

The position of the Committee senior officials regarding violations of law by officials of the Investigative Committee should be noted here. The Committee’s response to each of such cases is quick and tough, including acts of corruption in their ranks disregarding titles, positions or past services. We have not only legal, but moral right to respond hard to any facts of violation of law by state officials and colleagues from other law enforcement bodies. This year 7 investigators of the Russia’s Investigative Committee have been prosecuted for crimes.

During the probes investigators do not limit themselves to prosecution alone, but take measures to compensate the damage. This year the damage caused to the budget and the victims has exceeded 14.5 billion rubles. The investigators have arrested bank accounts of the accused and their other property worth over 7 billion rubles which equals to 48.9% of the damage. The amount of the damage compensated has reached 5 billion rubles, while about 4 billion rubles has been compensated over the same period of time last year.

It should be noted that revealing and investigation of corruption are both results of efficient cooperation of the committee’s investigating bodies with the officials of the Federal Security Service and Ministry of Interior carrying out investigative and search operations.

But the activity of the Russia’s Investigative Committee is not only to investigate criminal cases, but to improve laws in place in this area.

The Investigative Committee is an active member of working groups of implementation by the Russian Federation a number of international anti-corruption conventions, including the UN Convention against Corruption, the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption of the Council of Europe, the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

Special attention is paid to informing public on the processes of combating corruption. Obviousness of the progress in this battle increases the readiness of citizens to cooperate with the Investigative Committee on the one hand, and on the other hand it broadcasts the dogma of inevitability of punishment, which represents efficient prevention of corruption in itself.

To systematize the abovementioned processes there was an international conference “Cooperation of state authorities in investigating acts of corruption: problems and solutions” held on 23 October 2014 at the Investigative Committee Academy. The conference was dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of an outstanding Russian scientist Nikolai S. Alexeyev.

Fighting against corruption is one of the key priorities in the activity of the Russia’s Investigative Committee, as it is corruption that is a precondition for other crimes. The most important principle the Investigative Committee adheres to in combating corruption is inevitability of punishment no matter which status the criminal has. The Investigative Committee makes all efforts to involve the public to the battle against corruption by setting telephone hot lines and specialized internet-platforms. Decrease in the rate of corruption in our country is the contribution of the Russia’s Investigative Committee into development of civil society in the Russian Federation.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                      V.I. Markin