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The Council for Countering Corruption was set up in accordance with the Presidential Executive Order of May 2008 to create a system to combat corruption in the country and address the causes that lead to it. The President is the chairman of this Council.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,

At today’s Council meeting we will discuss ways to improve the state anti-corruption system. I would like to begin by saying that the anti-corruption legislation that has been developed over the past years and the practice of its application meet world standards. We have adopted a number of anti-corruption measures and introduced mechanisms that help expose corruption schemes at any level, work with a purpose and react in a timely fashion, and sometimes even isolate those involved in corruption from society.

In the first 9 months of 2015 alone more than 8,800 people were convicted on criminal charges of corruption. Disciplinary action was taken against almost 11,000 officials for violations of the anti-corruption standards.

Today we need to move on and first and foremost, resolve the tasks that were set forth in the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly. In particular, the Executive Order signed late last year is directed at this. This legal document sets the mechanism for disclosing information about an employee’s personal interest and for taking action against violators, including their dismissal due to loss of trust.

Among our priority areas is making anti-corruption enforcement more efficient. We need to improve the work of the organisations that control budget spending. Early exposure of those who show vested interest or unscrupulously spend budget funds, exposure of the use of fake or affiliated organisations and ruling out conflict of interest is very important.

Next. Everybody knows the information provided by opinion polls, and their results are well known: overall, the citizens positively assess the anti-corruption efforts made by the federal authorities. However, this is not enough. People come across local, so-called household corruption.

In a word, there is a lot to be done here. Our job is not to achieve some major victories overnight – this is very difficult, very hard to achieve. However, stopping would be even worse. We need to move forward. I would like to stress that heads of the Russian regions are responsible for reducing corruption.

We also need to improve such anti-corruption mechanism as forfeiture to the state of property purchased using illegal or bad funds. This should include compliance with international legal standards in returning assets illegally siphoned off to other jurisdictions.

An important issue is reimbursement for the damage caused by corruption. According to statistics, out of 15.5 billion rubles subject to collection under corruption cases, last year we managed to recover only 588 million rubles. You would agree that this is a very modest amount. We need to curb any attempt to offer bribes on behalf of commercial organisations to Russian or foreign officials when such attempts are made on the territory of other countries. Corresponding amendments have already been submitted to the State Duma. Of course, with this in mind, we need to improve our work and improve our cooperation with our partners abroad.

Finally, the development of anti-corruption mentality in society remains our key task. Non-acceptance of law violations should be instilled from an early age – at schools and universities and, of course, at work and in the family. We need to always bear this in mind.

Let’s get down to work.

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