Since becoming president of Russia three years ago, Dmitry Medvedev
has made a big show of fighting against corruption. He has ordered an
end to pre-trial detention, demanded a clean-up in the interior
ministry and required officials to leave the boards of state companies.

One of his radical-looking  measures mandating state officials and
their spouses to declare their income and property in a bid to probe how
their lifestyles matched their paychecks. A good idea, in theory. But,
according to the average Russian, however,  the bureaucrats’ returns are
pure fiction.

According to a new poll by the Levada centre,
an independent pollster, only 1 per cent of Russians actually believe
that state officials have been declaring their real income and property.

Asked whether the officials were at least declaring a majority of their income and property, just 11 per cent said yes.

The percentages are virtually unchanged from an identical poll
conducted by Levada a year ago, although if anything they are worse.
Then a full 2 per cent said they believe the declaration statements to
be true.

For Medvedev, this is worrying. Reading into the results means the
public not only believes that are officials blatantly concealing their
true income and assets – they think this highly-publicised
anti-corruption effort by the president has been unsuccessful.

Some 2.5 per cent of Russia’s abour force is composed of bureaucrats.

Asked to explain the poll results, officials and analysts told Russian daily Kommersant that
bureaucrats were able to get away with declaring so little, as property
could easily be registered under someone else’s name, or in offshore
accounts.

But Mikhail Grishankov, a Duma deputy for the pro-Kremlin United
Russia party, was more optimistic saying that the system would take a
while to change, and that only after a number of years would the Russian
public begin to believe the reforms against corruption had been
successful.

In a country that has satirised money-grubbing bureaucrats since the time of the 19th century author Nikolai Gogol, Grishankov’s prediction runs counter to all experience.

 

“Finantial Times”