By Ekaterina Karacheva

Major General Aleksandr Matveev

The reaction of analysts that the latest initiatives to counter corruption elicitied are not at all unequivocal. Differing opinions regarding the changes enacted by the government have been expressed. While some say that these innovations would ultimately prove themselves ineffective, others are convinced that they will pave the way to solving the problem. Major General Aleksandr Matveev of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs shares his thoughts on the issue.

– The Investigative Department of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Russian Federation is usually the entity to handle large corruption scandals. Still, your agency also is vested with authority to investigate allegations of corruption. To what problems do you accord the most attention?

– The Investigation Committee of the Prosecutor’s Office is in charge of over 70% of corruption cases that the law-enforcement agencies discover for the simple reason that it has the authority to commence criminal proceedings against public officials. Still, our agency would also be able to investigate the incidents of corruption. This would include violations of article 160-3 of the Russian Criminal Code (unauthorized appropriation or expenditure by a public official), articles 290 (accepting a bribe) and 291 (offering a bribe), article 292 (forgery by a public official), article 201 (abuse of power), as well as article 204 (commercial bribery).

It would be inaccurate to say that we began our efforts of countering corruption only yesterday. The issue is that corruption as a phenomenon was not covered as widely, and its societal ramifications were not presented in the same way they are now. The legal foundation that existed in the past did not satisfy neither the legislators nor law-enforcement officials. Many situations simply were not addressed in a detailed way. There was no set definition of what constitutes corruption. Now, all these gaps have been filled in the legislation the President authored that was enacted on December 19 in the State Duma. We are convinced that these legal innovations will allow the quality of our work to reach new levels. All that is left to do now is to implement the laws.

Additionally, in view of the problem’s significance, our agency is currently conducting a large-scale analytical assessment of the situation. In particular, we have come forward with recommendations of amending federal laws “On the status of the Police force,” “On investigative activities,” and “On state civil service,” as well as the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Also, we made a request to the Supreme Court of Russia to conduct a plenary session on the application of law to criminal cases involving corruption.

We are also making suggestions to change the Code of Criminal Procedure that would be directed at granting the state more authority to confiscate personal property and to remove immunity of certain categories of persons, such as attorneys, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and legislative assembly delegates.

– You noted that all there was left to do is to implement the laws. Are there any problems with it?

– I think that I would not need to explain to you that we have a number of laws enacted that are de-facto not enforced. I will not examine all of the reasons for it. Still, I would like to highlight the importance of the role of law-enforcement officials themselves. The extent to which a law will operate depends on the preparedness and the capabilities of these people. Again, one must stress that the role of the investigator in countering corruption is absolutely critical.

Determining the existence of a violation, investigating, and solving crimes are all the province of the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Charging the accused with a crime, identifying the scheme used to perpetrate an unlawful act, classifying the crime, and proving the allegations of corruption are up to the investigator. Investigator’s qualifications and his inner moral principles will determine the outcome of every particular case and the fight against corruption as a whole.

It must be noted that we did not just wait until the President formalizes the new approach towards corruption. Even before the new law, we started to train our investigators to work in the actual conditions that exist today. We organized several basic and applied seminars, conducted training sessions for investigators, and sent our head officials out to the regions of the country where the problems were especially acute.

Our investigative divisions in the Central Administrations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in each federal district have already embarked on working to reach the targets set out by the Russian President. We have practical positive results. In May of 2008, a criminal prosecution against Alexey Pokusaev, the head inspector of the Administrative and Technical Inspection Unit for the Eastern District of Moscow, was started. He was accused of taking a bribe in the amount of 472 thousand roubles from a representative of Parma-Viva company for not filing charges in connection with an administrative violation for the improper use of property for construction.

Recently, a court handed down the sentence for Sergey Nastin, director of Elektrokhimpribor in Sverdlovsk region. The prosecution established that he made a fraudulent and fictitious contract for information services that resulted in the transfer of more that 1.4 million roubles to a shell company. To hide these machinations, the director gave his accountants a report on the completion of services taken from a school book openly available on the Internet.

Moreover, investigators discovered that Nastin, in spite of the company’s million-rouble tax indebtedness, made a number of money-losing contracts for the benefit of himself and other third parties. This resulted in the loss of 4.8 million roubles to the state. The court sentenced Nastin to pay a fine of 300 000 roubles and to compensate the state for all harm that he caused, a total of 6.2 million roubles.

– All this notwithstanding, there have been views expressed that the fight against corruption is currently limited to only low-level officials. Statistics show that most defendants in corruption cases are policemen, teachers, medical workers, and ordinary citizens. What are the obstacles to investigating corruption for officials in the higher echelons of government?

– It is true that in the majority of cases, the position within the government of persons charged with corruption is relatively low. These individuals are heads of municipal agencies and their deputies, agents of various inspection bureaus, as well as education– and medical-sector administrators. I will say also that in some regions of the country, these types of cases are not prosecuted because people are afraid of losing their jobs and fear for bargaining with their conscience.

At the same time, cases involving corruption schemes committed by organized groups or as conspiracies are very rare. We cannot remain untroubled with that. I believe that the inefficiency of fighting corruption in these higher levels of government arises from the special procedures that now exist for beginning criminal prosecutions of certain categories of defendants. These procedures make gathering evidence and bringing the wrongdoers to justice more difficult.

I think that all citizens of Russia must have equal rights regardless of their social status. Another area of concern is that some civil servants are not classified as public officials under the current Criminal Code. These people include assistants to State Duma and Federation Council members, advisors to the government, and so on.

On the one hand, they can substantially influence decision-making. On another, they cannot be criminally charged for committing offenses as public officials. Only two articles of the Criminal Code could be applicable in these instances – usurping the authority of a public official or bribing a public office. The degrees of criminal liability in these instances are totally different than in the cases of direct corruption.

Only several days ago, the Court in the city of Kemerovo sentenced the chief architect of the Administration of the Novoilinskiy rayon of Novokuznetsk Elena Olkhovskaya to a term of three years in prison and a fine of 5 000 roubles. The prosecution was able to show that she received a bribe in the amount of 200 thousand roubles for approving the allocation of land for construction of a tire-repair business. Because she was not a public official, she was prosecuted under the fraud statute.

The Investigative Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Karelia republic is currently examining the case of the former chairman of the Karelia State Committee on Road Use and Construction Vladimir Kornienko, his deputy Albek Gizzatulin, and a director of a subsidiary state-owned company Oleg Shirlin. As investigators discovered, the three had used the funds allocated for road construction from 1999 to 2002 in building a private recreation facility near a lake on state-owned Goslesfond land – also without authorization. The combined total of damages they caused stands at 11 million roubles. While corruption is self-evident here, these people cannot be tried as public officials.

– How successful is the work of your agency overall in stopping corruption?

– In the first three quarters of 2008, the regional departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs have launched over 5 000 criminal cases just under the two most popular corruption articles of the Criminal Code – offering and receiving a bribe. More than

1 600 public official have been indicted. More than 4 000 cases have gone to courts where public officials were accused of abusing administrative discretion. Another 1 600 defendants have been charged with overstepping administrative discretion.

Also, our investigators have good experience in investigating crimes of commercial bribery. In 2008, 300 crimes of this type have been discovered. Recently, the Stavrapol krai Court sentenced the former head of the Architecture Administration of the city of Kislovodsk Alexandr Belokon to seven years in prison and a fine of 950 thousand roubles. He was found guilty of taking a bribe in the amount of 6 million roubles. Altogether, he was supposed to receive 12.5 million roubles for providing assistance in preparing documents for renting out a piece of municipal property for construction.

We also prepared for presentation to the court a case against the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Samara oblast Kadria Korovyakovskaya and head consultant Valeriy Shashkin. They are accused of getting a bribe in the amount of 760 thousand roubles and 10 thousand dollars for granting Geologia-C company the right to extract natural resources in the Stavrapolskiy rayon. Both defendants are now in custody.

Recently, the Regional Court of Sverdlovsk oblast  sentenced to nine years of imprisonment the head of the Special Police Force of the Regional Administration of Internal Affairs Konstantin Kislitskiy, who was also the director of security at the Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Works. The prosecution established that from 2003 to 2004 he inappropriately used his position to collect information relating to the indebtedness of the company, which he later transmitted to the director of Uralmetprom Holding Sergey Sklyar. Sergey Sklyar, in his turn, made fraudulent powers of attorney ostensibly issued by the creditors of the Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Works – the North-Caucausian, the Kuybyshevskaya, the Oktyabrskaya, and the Privolzhskaya Railroads.

The Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Works was supplying rails for the railroads that were being shipped with a special rigging. The railroads had to make a deposit for the rigging. When the rigging was returned to the Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Works, the deposit was refunded in the form of Sberbank securities. According to the prosecution, the defendants used the false powers of attorney to obtain 33 checks from the Nizhniy Tagil Metallurgical Works. The amount of damages totaled 24 million roubles. Kislitskiy was indicted under five Criminal Code articles – fraud, money-laundering, extortion, commercial bribery, and organizing a criminal conspiracy. In court, it was possible to prove the defendant’s involvement in procuring seven checks. He was found guilty of fraud and commercial bribery.

Together with Kislitskiy, jail sentences were also handed down to Sergey Boitsov, Valeriy Urchenko, Alexandr Serebryakov, Dmitriy Ribnikov, and Leonid Korobtsev. All of them received between 4.5 and 11 years. Sergei Sklyar died before his trial in an auto accident. His criminal prosecution was therefore dropped.