Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Speaker proposes confiscating property from corrupt officials and their families"
Putin meets with parliamentary parties before government report
On Saturday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with A Just Russia leaders Sergei Mironov and Nikolai Levichev. Putin will deliver his annual report to the State Duma later this month, which is why he is meeting with each parliamentary party beforehand to listen to their proposals.
Liberal-Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was the first to meet with the prime minister, suggested connecting Brest and Vladivostok with a railway, a highway and a fibre optic line, as well as moving the security forces professional holiday from Dec. 20 – the day when Felix Dzerzhinsky established the VChK – to the day when Peter the Great established the secret police.
Mironov concentrated on corruption during his meeting with Putin. He proposed tightening transparency requirements on regional governors, their deputies, heads of police departments, prosecutors, and parliament and government members.
The plan includes having them declare not only their income and that of their family members, but also their expenditures. The list of immediate family should also be expanded to include grown children, parents, brothers and sisters, Mironov said.
"As a rule, they all have very talented wives making very good money," he said. "And if we look at their other relatives, it turns out that they also have very talented family members."
But his most radical proposal, possibly "reeking of a repressive regime," as he put it, was the confiscation of property from corrupt officials and their families.
"If officials get caught committing unseemly deeds like accepting bribes, then confiscate all their property and force the relatives to prove that this property was acquired legally," he added. "If they prove it, the property will be returned to them. If they don't, it will remain in the state treasury."
"In other words, you're proposing cancelling the presumption of innocence?" Putin asked in surprise.
"Make an exception, perhaps, as a temporary measure for a certain number of years because of what is happening in Russia with corruption," Mironov added.
"Whose property would be confiscated – the one who is found guilty of corruption by the court?" Putin asked. "In other words, simply introduce another sanction, that of confiscation of property? Some articles of the law already have this, I believe."
"Somewhere in there, but these practically go unenforced," Mironov complained.
"Let's see," Putin nodded.
Maxim Volodin
