United Russia will decide which public officials will have to disclose their expenses.
The United Russia party is ready to act on Vladimir Putin's recommendation on expense declarations. It may introduce the requirement for its candidates before elections, or draft a law obliging all public officials to disclose their expenses. According to sources in the State Duma, the law could be drafted this year.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who also leads United Russia, spoke about "bureaucracy and corruption" at United Russia's Interregional Conference on the Development Strategy for Central Russia through 2020 held in Bryansk.
"We all agree that anyone who goes into politics must be transparent and must disclose his or her income. Disclosing expenses is also a good idea," he said.
The idea of expense declarations was discussed back in 2008, when the State Duma adopted the first package of anti-corruption laws submitted by Dmitry Medvedev. However, these discussions did not lead to any practical action then.
In July 2010, Farid Mukhametshin, chairman of Tatarstan's Council of State, raised the question again at a meeting of the legislature's council. In August 2010, Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman proposed adopting a law on imposing expense declarations for public officials as "an instrument of combating corruption". The State Duma, and in particular the United Russia party, did not reject the idea outright, yet no practical action was taken to implement it.
United Russia may have to act now that its leader has addressed the issue so directly. Valery Ryazansky, deputy chairman of the United Russia party in the State Duma, told this newspaper that there are two possible ways to implement Putin's idea, the first of them a legislative initiative regulating the procedure for submitting expense declarations.
"If such an initiative is not proposed, the party may take an internal decision obliging party members to declare their expenses," Ryazansky said.
The new norms will above all concern intending State Duma deputies. "Although the provision on mandatory expense declarations may not be formalised, they will have a clearer sense of their high moral and political responsibility," Vladimir Pligin, chairman of the State Duma committee on constitutional legislation, told ITAR-TASS.
Alexei Volkov, chairman of the State Duma commission on anti-corruption legislation, told Kommersant that the law on expense declarations could be drafted already this year. He said the law will cover "deputies of all levels and public officials."
However, he thinks it would be unreasonable to entrust control of this issue to the professionals who inspect income declarations.
"This would not ensure the necessary objectivity or transparency, because the staff of personnel departments depends on executives," he said. Therefore, expenses should be monitored by tax services, Volkov said. In case of complaints or reports in the media, facts should be checked by law enforcement agencies.
Expenses can be routinely monitored "only if payments are made in a non-cash form," said Mikhail Grishankov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on security.
The law enforcement agencies, tax services and the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring have the resources necessary to control expenses, but they need a law allowing them to do this, said Yelena Panfilova, head of Transparency International's Russian office.
"Public officials all over the world hate this procedure. Americans submit such declarations every year and consider them a necessary evil," Panfilova said.
She thinks the struggle against corruption could be facilitated by the ratification of Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption, which says that "a significant increase in the assets of a public official that he or she cannot reasonably explain in relation to his or her lawful income" should be established as a criminal offence." The Russian Communist Party has submitted a relevant draft law to the State Duma.
But a "voluntary declaration of one's expenses before elections," which United Russia has proposed, "will not change anything," Panfilova said.
Maxim Ivanov