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The document consists of four sections setting out measures for drafting anti-corruption laws, improving state administration, raising legal specialists’ professional standards and carrying out legal education work, and details the priority steps for the plan’s implementation.

Anti-corruption measures include drafting a federal anti-corruption law that will set out the specific requirements for candidates for magistrates’ and civil service posts, and establish controls on their income and property obligations.

Other measures include raising the quality of anti-corruption evaluations of laws and regulations, optimizing and clarifying the different state bodies’ powers, and speeding up examination of cases in the courts.

Measures to improve state administration procedures will include steps to ensure fair competition on commodities and financial markets and non-discriminatory access to the infrastructure of natural monopolies. Anti-trust liability will also be increased.

A series of measures will be implemented to guarantee citizens’ rights to accurate information and give the mass media greater independence.

Superfluous civil service and municipal posts will be trimmed and steps will be taken at the same time to attract qualified professionals to the civil and municipal service and offer good performance-based financial incentives.

Under the plan, standards for state services and strict regulations for the exercise of state functions will be drawn up and implemented.

Furthermore, the expediency of establishing special anti-corruption and crime prevention sub-divisions within the federal state bodies’ human resources departments will be examined.

The section on priority implementation measures details instructions to the Government, Chief of the Presidential Executive Office, Prosecutor-General’s Office, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance and other federal and regional state agencies.

The Cabinet of Ministers and the heads of the Presidential Executive Office are instructed to take measures to ensure that civil servants respect the established code of ethics.

Other instructions to the Government include drafting and determining the financing for developing a network of state-run legal aid and social support centres for the public. The Cabinet of Ministers has until February 1, 2009, to draw up measures to expand public supervision of federal, regional, and local budget expenditure.

The Prosecutor-General’s Office is instructed to increase its supervisory work to ensure that state bodies involved in examining criminal cases enforce the laws, organise anti-corruption evaluation of Russian Federation laws and statutes, and increase supervision to ensure the lawfulness and justification of procedural decisions in criminal cases involving the seizure of assets, property and non-property rights, monetary funds of companies and so-called ‘raider’ cases.