President Medvedev was fighting corruption again yesterday, and many people are asking for my comments.
Why not comment. My tongue is loose enough.
What is being proposed (very roughly):
A crackdown on "fly-by-night companies" and their founders (up to and including criminal liability).
The idea of "multiple fines" for both bribe-takers and bribe-givers is being expanded.
A new criminal offense: acting as an intermediary in the taking of a bribe.
Liability for "corruption abroad" is being introduced.
The issue of monitoring officials' income declarations is being developed further (this is what's causing the most noise).
More details here
Usually the president's/government's anti-corruption initiatives are so laughable that I was already getting ready to sneer and insult human dignity.
But this time there is at least some minimal value in it.
Liability for corruption abroad (that is, if you go to Zanzibar and pay off a local official so he'll let you shoot a hippo in a national park, you could then be prosecuted for it back in Russia) is a very important and useful thing.
An intermediary in bribery is also a perfectly reasonable addition.
One example of how this can be used:
You want to get a quota to export humpbacked little horse meat from Russia (a joking reference to the fairy-tale character The Little Humpbacked Horse). So you pay a bribe. Obviously, it's not the minister or his deputy who negotiates the bribe with you, but some adviser or assistant.
In those very, very rare cases when the adviser/assistant gets arrested with a suitcase full of cash, he says: I don't sign off on humpbacked-horse quotas. So this isn't bribery, it's fraud. I was deceiving this person, telling him I'd get him the quotas even though I had no authority to do so.
As a result, it's a different charge, the case proceeds differently, and so on.
Multiple fines (if you're caught taking a 1 million ruble bribe, you'll pay a 50 million ruble fine) are more complicated.
In general this makes more sense than confiscation of property, but in practice it will work almost just as badly.
So they fine the crook a brazillion rubles.
So what? He'll say:
*I sold all my property — my dacha and my Zhiguli car (a Soviet/Russian make) — to pay part of the fine.
Right now I'm paying 30% of my salary (2,700 rubles a month) and I expect to finish paying it off around the time the Sun burns out.
And that villa in Sardinia, the Maserati, and the yacht don't belong to me, but to FBNKGVFVB ltd Ciprus. And the company itself doesn't belong to me either, but to the nominee director Christodoulos Vassiliadis.
Thank you, goodbye.
*4. As for "fly-by-night companies," that's complete nonsense. A company is a company — just a tool for doing business. Whether it's a one-day company or a hundred-day company.
If you're a developer, then for the deal on each individual property you're more likely to use exactly that kind of company. A pure one-day shell. And so on. There are a million examples.
How do you distinguish a "criminal" shell company from a normal one?
Most likely Medvedev meant the use of shell companies for cashing out money, including bribe money.
Well, here our president — suddenly struck by a fit of naivete — needs to be reminded that the entire large-scale cash-out business is controlled/run by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), something absolutely everyone in this country knows. And he knows it too.
So in this area the fight should be directed not at shell companies, but at those thick-necked crook-generals.
Declarations.
On declarations, see point 3 of this post, section "Christodoulos Vassiliadis."
And besides, if we're making such a fuss over these declarations, we need to understand what the penalty is for lying.
We all remember Major Karpov and Colonel Kuznetsov, who together with accomplices siphoned off 5 billion rubles, bought $1 million apartments (quite officially) and various Mercedeses and Lexuses, yet continue to work calmly in the Interior Ministry and receive promotions.
So what?
We all remember Minister Yusufov, who after spending his whole life in government service bought shipyards in Germany for €40 million.
So what?
And of course we remember my perennial hero Senka Vainshtok, who despite having large but not enormous income, after leaving Transneft quite officially invests hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate all over the world.
So what?
And here I smoothly move on to the second topic I wanted to comment on.
Publications by blogger Alexei Navalny about alleged multi-billion-ruble embezzlement by Transneft during construction of the ESPO pipeline are part of an information campaign against the pipeline monopoly aimed at obstructing its investment projects, Transneft president Nikolai Tokarev told reporters.
...
*"He [Navalny] is secondary, even tertiary, brought in as an executor. We are building and will keep building, so they need to slow us down," the Transneft president believes.
...
"In my view, he's ridiculous in this situation," Tokarev emphasized.
*/////////
The idea that "blogger Navalny" is acting on instructions from the CIA and Martians (if he's really "tertiary," then the Martians hired the CIA, and they hired me) — fine, whatever.
But Tokarev is plainly and deliberately refusing to discuss / acknowledge / investigate the facts laid out in Transneft's own report.
So on the very day President Medvedev was fighting corruption, the head of a company that embodies corruption more or less openly showed us exactly what he wipes all anti-corruption initiatives with.
And notably, the bold crook Tokarev was doing this not only to Medvedev, but also to his Dark Lord — Vladimir Putin — who had said that an investigation was necessary.
Those who have read the Transneft report remember perfectly well that it contains bribes, kickbacks, and those very same fly-by-night companies registered using stolen passports.
And it contains all this in a form that, even under current law, would be enough to lock them all up.
So what?
Vainshtok invests in real estate. Tokarev at that very moment is probably having lunch on black caviar stuffed with oysters served on a diamond tray.
And in prison they're serving macaroni right now!
So there you have it. Finally, to bring President Medvedev back from his romantic legalisms to real life, I suggest he make use of his qualities as an "advanced internet user" and type the words "anti-corruption fighter" into Google Images.
The first image in the results will be this one.
Let me remind you that in Moscow, where Medvedev and Sobyanin are also waging a very vigorous fight against corruption (and have apparently almost defeated it), the man in that picture is still an adviser to the mayor. And he is still wearing a watch worth $1 million. So is the problem really about legislative initiatives? P.S. As for "where's the positive part?" and "it's easy to criticize, why don't you propose something," I'll write separately on that.