Russia Country Profile

Police

Individual Corruption

The Russian police are perceived to be one of the most notoriously corrupt institutions in the country. This perception is supported by Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2009, according to which, the police is perceived to be among the most corrupt institutions in Russia. Demand for bribes is widespread among the traffic police and patrol officers, and drivers that have been pulled over are accustomed to tucking in money with their papers when they hand them to officers.

According to First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buskman, approximately 14% of corruption cases take place in the area of law enforcement. This is supported by the figures from the Supreme Court, according to which, 31% of the officials imprisoned on corruption charges in 2008 were from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as reported in a 2009 article by Russia Today. According to President Medvedev, corruption cases investigated in the time frame January-June 2009 involved over 700 law enforcement officers.

Business Corruption

The World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 reveals that companies identify Russia to perform poorly in relation to the reliability of police services to protect them from crime. According to INDEM 2005, police officers are authorised to conduct check-ups on SMEs in Russia. According to a 2005 survey by CEFIR, 70% of SMEs had been harassed by several police inspections over the preceding six-month period. Arbitrary inspections by the police have also been criticised by President Medvedev, according to whom, arbitrary inspections by police officers as a way to extort bribes from small companies must halt, as reported by Reuters. Currently, police act as public health inspectors, building inspectors and tax police and can rightfully check almost anything. Businesspeople reportedly prefer to pay to get them away. Any police officer can stop a loaded truck and demand to see evidence that the goods are not stolen. If any documentation is missing, the officer has the right to seize the goods to check its content and origin. According to INDEM 2005, companies often choose to pay a bribe to avoid this harassment. Many companies report paying protection money to the police or to security companies as a necessary business expense.

Political Corruption

While law enforcement officials can be held accountable for their actions by law, the supervising bodies are in fact reluctant to press charges. When they do, it is mostly done for political reasons. Russia's interior minister announced in July 2009 that officials who appoint senior police officers will be held responsible for those appointments. However, according to INDEM's corruption analyst Georgi Satarov, this step is an 'internal bureaucratic control' and will have 'little significance', because it does not change the essence of Russia's law enforcement system, as reported in a 2009 article by Voice of America News.

A teacher at the Interior Ministry Law Institute of Tyumen, Igor Groshev, was sacked and sued after he revealed pervasive bribery by cadets at the Institute in 2006. The court found Groshev guilty of damaging the 'professional reputation' of the school. Groshev is still appealing the court verdict in higher instances, but experts in Russia believe that he does not have much of a chance, according to a 2009 article by CBS News.

In November 2009, Major Alexei Dymovsky, a Russian police officer from Novorossiysk, released a series of videos accusing senior police officers of corruption and appealing to Prime Minister Putin to tackle corruption in the police force. As a result of this appeal, Major Dymovsky was sacked and later prosecuted for abuse of office, according to a December 2009 article by Reuters. Regional police conducted their own investigation after the videos were released, which they said did not back up Dymovsky's allegations.

In December 2009, President Medvedev removed the head of the tax-crimes unit in the Moscow police department, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Mikhalkin, alleged by the investment fund Hermitage Capital to be a key figure in criminal probes against the fund and to be implicated in a USD 230 million tax fraud, according to a 2009 article by The Wall Street Journal. The fund claims to have exposed a tax fraud which allegedly implicated the police, members of the judiciary, and tax officials. Consequently, the lawyer who investigated the tax fraud for Hermitage, Sergei Magnitsky, was detained on charges of tax evasion. Magnitsky died in pretrial detention in November 2009, and representatives of the Russian business and legal community as well as civil society actors have interpreted his arrest as a way to silence attempts to expose corruption in the country.

Triggered by these developments, and in an effort to tamp down corruption, in December 2009, President Medvedev signed a decree to streamline the law enforcement structure, in particular ordering a 20% staff cut before January 2012 and instituting the rotation of senior personnel at the Interior Ministry, according to a December 2009 article by RIA Novosti. These redundancies will be balanced with higher salaries for those police officers who will survive the reform, making them less susceptible to bribes.

Frequency

World Economic Forum: The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010:
- Business executives give the reliability of Russian police services to enforce law and order a score of 3.1 on a 7-point scale (1 'cannot be relied upon at all' and 7 'can always be relied upon').

Transparency International: Global Corruption Barometer 2009:
- 30% of households who had contact with the police in 2008 report to have paid a bribe.

The World Bank & IFC: Enterprise Surveys 2009:
- Over 38% of companies surveyed identify crime, theft and disorder as a major constraint on doing business in Russia.

EBRD & World Bank: Life in Transition Survey - Russia 2007:
- 18% of household respondents claim they 'always/usually' bribe the traffic police.

- 7% of household respondents say they 'always/usually' bribe the police in general.

- 33% of household respondents report to 'distrust' the police.