Bribery ability: more corruption crimes have been uncovered in Russia
The past year has demonstrated a paradoxical trend in the fight against corruption in Russia. Against the background of the active digitalization of public services and stricter legislation, corruption schemes have not disappeared, but on the contrary, they have been revealed significantly more than in 2024. In any case, this is evidenced by the data provided by the head of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Police Lieutenant General Andrei Kurnosenko. In addition, corruption has changed significantly under the influence of digitalization in many areas of life. Experts record the transition from "suitcase" bribes to complex IT schemes and "technical" corruption, which is becoming increasingly difficult to prove. The details are in the Izvestia article.
Numbers
"The amount of material damage in completed and suspended criminal cases has increased to 16 billion rubles, property has been seized, property, money, and valuables worth over 45 billion rubles have been voluntarily repaid," Police Lieutenant General Andrei Kurnosenko, head of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, told TASS. Economic security units have identified more than 20,000 crimes, he said. The total number of corruption—related crimes registered last year exceeded 43,000 (an increase of 12.3% compared to last year), and almost 39,000 of them were solved.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, the most common crime of this kind is giving a bribe (almost 8.8 thousand crimes), taking a bribe (8.5 thousand) is in second place, and petty bribery is slightly less than 5.9 thousand cases. Mediation in receiving and transferring bribes — 3.6 thousand. 2.4 thousand cases of commercial bribery have been identified.
Turnkey tenders and kickbacks in the crypt
As before, the bulk of financial violations occurred in the field of public procurement, especially in the framework of national infrastructure projects, a law enforcement source familiar with the statistics told Izvestia. A significant proportion of criminal cases are related to collusion in the allocation of contracts for the construction of roads and housing and communal services.
According to the interlocutor of Izvestia, there is a trend towards receiving remuneration through a chain of one-day firms or in cryptocurrency.
Payment for speed in the "digital window"
A new reason for receiving illegal remuneration is to speed up the processing of digital requests. The scheme is used in various industries, in municipal and state organizations. An unspoken market for "accelerated" processing of digital applications has emerged in a number of regions. It can be about anything from obtaining a license to subsidies.
— A citizen or a business is transparently hinted that the standard review period is, for example, a month. It often happens that a person who applied for public services did not calculate the deadline for submitting documents. In this case, they are offered to pay for "priority service" and promise to resolve the issue in a matter of hours. The money is allegedly transferred for "consulting services" to a related commercial structure, the source explains.
Concrete and mzda
The construction industry remains at the top in terms of corruption risks. In addition to the bribes for approving redevelopments, schemes with the capital repair fund and the selection of contractors for managing apartment buildings were added.
— Management companies affiliated with officials win contests, and then overstate tariffs or perform poorly. It is difficult to prove a direct connection, but indirect signs are obvious, — the interlocutor of Izvestia notes. According to him, today this evil is being fought reluctantly in some regions because of the beneficiaries' ties with government structures.
— In fact, this is mafia activity — fraudsters have been receiving income from citizens for a long time and using these funds they pay bribes to the security forces and authorities in charge. There is not enough one—time involvement for receiving a bribe - this is a complex organized criminal activity that requires the most severe approach. In addition, it is necessary to eliminate the legal gaps related to the management of apartment buildings," the source says.
Dead souls
— Registration of relatives, relatives and affiliated persons for positions in a controlled institution for the sake of illegal gain through abuse of official authority carries both direct and indirect damage to a specific enterprise and the economy as a whole, — said Valentin Stanovov, an expert on organized crime, head of the security service of a large holding company, retired police colonel. — Another variant of a similar scheme is when the boss issues bonuses to a subordinate, and later takes these funds from him. Moreover, in many cases, a lower-level employee is dragged into a corruption scheme by threats of trouble in the service. However, there is also voluntary cooperation — sometimes an employee, wanting to take the right position, promises the boss a commission from his salary. This is how responsible positions often go to crooks.
What does the statistics say?
Official figures show an increase in the detection rate of corruption-related crimes. However, as Stanovov notes, such data does not reflect the scale of the real picture of corruption — many small bribes are ignored due to latency. At the same time, investigations of large multi-level schemes often run into the absence of witnesses willing to testify.
— The system has learned how to fight domestic corruption, but the high—level one, where the participants are top managers and high-ranking officials, has become more sophisticated. They employ a staff of lawyers who calculate the risks and choose workarounds," Stanovov said.
Will there be a result?
The Izvestia interlocutor believes that without systematically strengthening the independence of the judicial system, protecting the rights of "informants" and further reducing administrative pressure on business, corruption will only evolve, but not decrease.
— It's like fighting a virus — while we are treating old strains, new ones are already developing. What is needed here is not pinpoint strikes, but the strengthening of the entire "immunity" of the state — transparency, competition and public control," summarizes Valentin Stanovov.
The head of the Interior Ministry's anti-corruption headquarters, Kurnosenko, considers the existing legal norms effective if they are strictly applied.
— The issue of the need to tighten responsibility for corruption offenses remains one of the most controversial. In my opinion, the existing legal norms, with their strict application, are effective enough to combat this negative phenomenon," he said.
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