Today, the Russian parliament – the State Duma – ratified the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. It took just over 2 years for Russia to ratify the Convention, which the country signed in December of 2003, and the ratification did not go easy:
The voting was preceded by emotional statement by deputies, including on the following question: is it worthy of introducing into the Russian language another term to define this evil? But following some debate, they decided to leave the present term.
Leader of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky said that “when we cut time while discussing the question on corruption, this is already corruption”. He also claimed that “there was no corruption in the Russian Empire and during the Soviet rule”. According to the leader of Liberal Democrats, corruption started developing in the country late in the 1980s from Russia’s southern areas.
Independent deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov called “for giving a guarantee that while voting for the convention, we shall return assets, taken away from the country, to Russia”. “We shall ratify the convention, but there is no specific action plan. We shall crow today, and shall be working out a plan for another decade,” Ryzhkov regretted.
The Convention targets mainly government officials engaged in corruption. But it does not address the other side of corruption – the enabling environment issues. Russia will have to do a lot more to not only track corrupt government officials but also to stop corruption at its roots. On a related note, bribes in Russia, according to a recent study by the INDEM Foundation, surpassed $315 billion in one year (!!!). According to the Russian Constitution, the Convention still needs to be ratified by the Upper Chamber – the Federal Council – and signed by the president. If you know Russian, you can read some quotes by deputies from a heated discussion today here. My favorite is the one about how there was virtually no corruption in the Soviet Union. Despite many conflicting opinions, the convention was voted for by all deputies in the building.
Published Date: February 17, 2006