26.04.09

Since the beginning of the current year the investigating bodies under the prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation have received 12,316 reports about incidents of corruption, deputy chairman of the Investigations Committee under the prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation (SKP), Vasiliy Piskarev, has said.

"On the basis of some reports, criminal cases were launched - which number 4,155 since the beginning of the year and which substantially exceeds the figure for the same period of the last year", Piskarev announced at a seminar-meeting of the heads of investigating bodies of the SKP on fight against corruption, which was held in Krasnodar on Thursday (23 April).

At the same time he noted that in the first quarter of 2009 there were 7,000 criminal cases relating to corruption being worked on by the investigators of the SKP and 1,665 of them were sent to the courts.

"Investigating bodies of the SKP are playing an important role in the investigation of crimes relating to corruption. Thus, in 2008 they investigated 49,000 reports, 10,000 criminal cases were launched and materials of 5,000 cases were sent to the courts," Piskarev noted.

He stressed that the largest number of crimes relating to corruption were solved by investigative bodies of Tatarstan, Yakutia, Bashkortostan and Bryansk Region. This year investigators of Krasnoyarsk Territory and

Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, Nizhniy Novgorod and Rostov regions were in the lead in terms of the number of cases launched.

Altogether, according to Piskarev, the law enforcement bodies of the Russian Federation last year investigated over 38,500 criminal cases relating to corruption and the criminal cases regarding 30,500 crimes were sent to the courts.

According to his information, the bulk of them were crimes against the state authorities and interests of the state services. Among them were 5,000 incidents of abuse of office and nearly 6,000 incidents of receiving bribes. These acts were committed by officials among whom were 13 employees of the prosecutors office, eight employees of the courts, 27 employees of the drug enforcement agency, 100 customs officials and nearly 1,500 representatives of the internal affairs structures.

In addition to this, criminal charges were brought against over 2,000 people working in the structures of executive power of various levels and 69 legislators.

(RIA Novosti news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0843 gmt 23 Apr 09 quoted Piskarev as saying that the level of corruption in Russia remained high: "The high level of corruption in the Russian Federation is attested to by crime statistics." The agency quoted the head of the directorate for procedural control in the sphere of countering corruption at the Main Directorate of the Procedural Control of the SKP of Russia, Arkadiy Mazhayev, as saying that the number of established facts of bribe taking grew by 7.7 per cent last year.)

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Source: Interfax