Read this interesting interview with Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore. It’s interesting in general, and doubly so when it comes to fighting corruption. Singapore ranks among the very best in the Corruption Perceptions Index, even though its population is not made up of Norwegians or Swedes, but rather Chinese and Malays, who supposedly have “corruption traditions” ten times stronger than Russians. — Singapore’s success in fighting corruption is remarkable. What advice can you give Russia, where corruption is one of the key problems? — I cannot give advice. Singapore has managed to achieve zero tolerance for corruption. If you take a bribe, you will be charged, convicted, and punished for the crime—no matter who you are, even if you are a minister. Our anti-corruption system is based on several principles. They include an independent judiciary and tough, effective anti-corruption laws that are enforced without exception. They also include an independent, adequately funded anti-corruption bureau from which no one expects leniency. The strategy of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau is to detect the crime, strike, and prevent. Strict laws and intimidating sentences make corruption too risky and not profitable enough. It also requires a government that serves the public interest and carries out the policies it announces. We pay our civil servants decent salaries. If you pay too little, people will not be able to live on their wages, and corruption will be inevitable no matter how hard you try to defeat it. That is China’s problem: officials’ salaries are low, but the opportunities to make money are there. And even death sentences do not help. But the problem cannot be solved simply by raising officials’ salaries. You also need to make the system of public administration transparent and limit officials’ discretionary power. Still, a low level of corruption does not mean its complete absence. Educating society is one of the main preventive measures; it is the key to zero tolerance for corruption. If someone makes an illegal offer, they must understand that people are more likely to report it to the police than to pay a bribe. This strategy helped Singapore defeat steadily growing corruption when the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party) first came to power in 1959. In the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, Singapore shared first place with New Zealand and Denmark. Recently I read an interesting story in the newspapers. A woman came from China to work in Singapore. She had a conflict with a colleague at the company and tried to bribe her supervisor—$1,000—so that he would fire her rival. — And how did that story end? — She went to jail. She thought that sort of thing was possible, but in Singapore we have a different culture. http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/1415582/prosche_menyatsya_kogda_ty_malenkij_li_syan_lun We do not need to invent anything. And there is no need to hold meetings on modernization or fighting corruption either—it is a pointless waste of time for a crowd of loafers. Strictly enforce the rules that are already written, and show no leniency to “our own people”—that’s the whole recipe. Here is today’s meeting between blogger Medvedev and “internet activists.” I would be very grateful to those “internet activists” who dare to remind the blogger about the “Daimler case,” for example.
That would be a very timely reminder, if we are talking about a conversation with “internet activists.” On April 5, 2010, those same “internet activists” sent thousands of appeals to the prosecutor’s office and to blogger Medvedev, demanding that those responsible for taking bribes be held accountable. The information on the recipients exists, and Daimler itself (including its Russian office) admitted everything. And what came of it? Almost two years have passed. Where is even a single formal charge? Where are the cases sent to court? Where are the arrests of suspects? Where is even one publicly dismissed official? Nothing happened for one simple reason: among those taking bribes were employees of the FSO (Russia’s Federal Protective Service), the Defense Ministry, and the Interior Ministry. If they were taking bribes for vehicle procurement, they were most likely taking them for the procurement of everything else as well. But these people are part of blogger Medvedev’s inner circle, so there will be no arrests.
What is more, blogger Medvedev is indirectly covering for crooks by misleading us: in an interview with Vedomosti, he said that the Americans had not provided some necessary data. That is simply a lie. Even our informal group was able to obtain the case materials from the U.S. Department of Justice; they are public records. Here are the names of the companies the money was sent to. Get Interpol involved and find out who cashed it out. That is not a problem at all these days, no matter how elaborate the offshore chains may be. It is obvious what needs to be done. This is not rocket science. Enough talk already, and enough endless meetings—put the crooks behind bars when they are sitting right within arm’s reach.