My Presentation at Aba/Ceeli and Rfe/Rl

Boris Demidov, TI-RussiaPage 111/19/2018

CORRUPTION IN RUSSIA AND TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL-RUSSIA ACTIVITIES

PRESENTATION AT RFE/RL

Boris Demidov

Transparency International was established almost a decade ago and today it's the largest international non-profit organization that focuses on anti-corruption activities worldwide. It has national chapters in more than 80 countries. TI-Russia was launched in December 1999 but officially registered in May 2000 and joined TI as its National Chapter later in the fall. Our most recent projects include the 4 I would like to talk to you about – Draft to Access to Information Law in Kaliningrad Region, Corruption Perception Index for 45 Russian Regions, establishing National Anti-Corruption Resource Center in Russia, and series of annual workshops onAnti-Corruption Strategies for Transitional Economies.

The idea for the last one emerged over the course of discussions that we had during various regional workshops in the FSU and EE countries. It's a common understanding that all countries in that region, regardless how independent and distant they became within the last 10-15 years, have common problems with corruption, and as the result, they have to find and implement common solutions. Often we can see as international and national organizations all over the world try to reinvent the wheel and implement without any local adjustments instruments and practices that proved to be successful elsewhere. We found it very frustrating to explain that some best practices from Hong Kong do not necessarily apply to Ukraine. For example, there is a much better toolkit from Slovakia. So TI-Ukraine, TI-Russia and Ukrainian Coalition for Freedom of Choice organized a workshop in Kiev last July where a lot of anti-corruption practitioners from the FSU and EE countries came in order to exchange concrete information and tools they use in their daily work. Together with representative of international and bi-lateral organizations they identified key actions to be taken and areas of possible cooperation. The next workshop will take place later this fall in St. Petersburg.

The next project deals with FOI legislation and was launched last September.

First I would like to explain why I think this law is very important for Russia. It's not just that Russian society was always divided into two groups of very different sizes in respect of access to information: those who have it and those who have not. Small wonder public officials were always using any opportunity to profit from this situation. I believe that right now we have almost all necessary laws and procedures to fight corruption and minimize it sufficiently with just a few exceptions. Access to Information Law (AIL) is one of them. When and if it will be passed, legal anti-corruption structure will be almost completed and all we have to do is enforce the existing legislation.

Recently there were some important changes made in this area. The Criminal Code and the Administrative Code (or Code of Administrative Violations that will come into power this July) introduce some new legal norms that make withholding information or/and provision of false information punishable by fine. If these new norms will be enforced, it's a very good sign and it will help to make compliance with the concept of access to information mandatory.

Our idea to draft this law emerged in spring 2001 when TI-R organized a workshop on corruption in Kaliningrad and a group of local politicians and legislators approached us and asked for our assistance to help them draft that law. The Eurasia Foundation provided the funding, we hired the best experts, spent a few months working on it and the final product is compatible with European standards on FOI legislation and is very specific on its implementation, compared to many FOI laws in the Eastern Europeans countries. The draft law passed the 1st reading two weeks ago and is scheduled for the 2nd and 3d reading on June 27th. There were just a few significant changes so far – for example, initially all official information was to be released in 24 hours, now it's a week. It’s not as good as we wanted but maybe it’s more realistic.

It's too early to say what will finally come out if it - even if the draft will be passed in two weeks, it has to be signed into the law by the governor (Vladimir Egorov) who did not make his position on this issue clear yet. There is also a lot of criticism from influential political opponents. On the other hand, Kaliningrad more that any other region in Russia is considered to be a part of Europe and Kaliningrad politicians are very ambitious and they really want to show that it's true, that they are the champions of the reforms in Russia like other Russian regions. And there is a lot of work to be done - according to the Index on how Russian government agencies are open for information that was released by Media-Union this April, Kaliningrad region was ranked one hundred out of 434 where #1 is the best.

Mr. Putin, who spent some time on corruption in his presidential address this April, mentioned that access to information is one of the most important and effective tools to fight corruption. President Putin has the governors’ ear and we hope Mr. Egorov we not ignore President's message. We also have certain expectations that business community is on our side - it's getting more and more interested in law making process and especially in how laws are enforced. AIL will allow them to request a lot of financial information, on public procurement, for example and this is very important for them. We also received a lot of support from the regional Ombudsman office and various NGOs. So we hope the law will be finally passed. But even if it won't be, we already have requests from several other regions that want our assistance in this field.

This time we would do it in a different, more advanced way - we will bring not just one law but an anti-corruption package to those regions: AIL + code of conduct for public officials, as an internal instrument to make them ethical, more accountable. We have an agreement with the group of members of the State Duma that introduced earlier this May a federal Code of Conduct for public officials. It passed the 1st reading and is scheduled for the 2nd reading later this summer. They will assist us in drafting regional codes regardless of whether the federal Code will be passed.

The next project was supported by George Soros himself who came last summer to Russia and became very much interested in an idea to have an independent poll on how corruption is perceived in Russia similar to what TI does worldwide with Corruption Perception Index. We just started this project and the concept is to interview three focus groups in each and every region where the poll will be conducted - public officials, businessmen and households. We hired an independent and very respected polling agency that has a lot of experience working on various projects in Russia. The data will be collected and made public either in December this year or in January next year. We hope that this information will be useful for local officials who often do not know what people living in their own region think about corruption and their elected representatives, which government agency is viewed as the most corrupt, what local business associations think about existing laws and procedures, etc. We believe that this information will be treated as a very powerful instrument that motivated governors in order to promote transparency and accountability, get reelected, attract Foreign Direct Investments, etc. can use to make the difference in their regions.

We also believe that it will be very fruitful for journalists and researchers to have access to this authentic data since a lot of publications on corruption in Russia are based on not very reliable and accurate data.

That brings us to our last project that I would like to talk to you about. It has a special place in my heart - National Anti-Corruption Resource Center (ACRC). A year ago TI-R received funding from Open Society Institute-R (Soros Foundation) to launch its own web-site that within the last year became a clearing house and an expert pool on anti-corruption activities in Russia. It is also the only Russian-language web-site that is focused entirely on anti-corruption issue. This web-site was used by various Russian organizations dealing with anti-corruption as well as other TI national chapters that didn't or don’t have their own web-sites as a "hub" web resource to make public their materials.

That was the main reasons why earlier this spring TI-R along with 6 other national chapters in the FSU and EE countries was selected for 2 and a half year long project with European Commission to establish national ACRCs in their respective countries.

In conclusion, I would like to say that although anti-corruption activities in Russia are a never-ending story, in the future I foresee a happy end for it