The Wages of Virtue
// The state will pay officials for not taking bribes
The Government administrative reform commission headed by Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Naryshkin has approved the full Model Program to Fight Corruption in the executive branch of the state at the regional and federal levels, which will be tested in 18 regions of the Russian Federation. The most important part of the program is a “list of corrupt posts” in the government. Officials will be taken off that list and put on terminable contract. Officials would could earn money from bribes will be paid a “compensation package” directly from their ministries.
The program will be tested at the federal level this year and next and at the regional level this year through 2010. The tests will be identical and will be launched in the autumn and winter of the year. Naryshkin told Kommersant that the experiment would be conducted in 18 regions. He named Saratov, Tula, Chelyabinsk and Kaluga Regions specifically. Vladimir Yuzhakov, head of the Center for Strategic Development and one of the program's developers, said that 227 million rubles will be spent on the program this year. Indications are that the program will become the basis for a national campaign if it is successful.
The program will establish Commissions on the Observation of the Requirements for the Professional Conduct of State Civil Servants, as envisaged in Presidential Order No. 269 of March 3, 2007. The commissions goals were unstructured before, but now they will be required to coordinate their efforts with personnel departments and state services, as well as to take on new functions, the most important of which will be the compilation of the list of corrupt posts.
The anticorruption measures are mainly oriented toward supervision of officials “on the list.” That list, which is to be approved by the head of the ministry, agency or regional government, will include posts related to the distribution of government resources, to government purchasing and supervisory capacities as well as those who make appointments to such posts. In addition, the list will include any officials who have direct contact with the public as part of their government service.
The most important mechanism for control over the officials on the list will their transfer to terminable contract. The vast majority of officials work on interminable contract. Their dismissal is complicated and requires large compensation, except in cases of violation of the law. That is tied to the most controversial element in the program – the provision of “compensation packages” to potentially corruptible officials, that is, de facto partial compensation from the federal budget for funds the official is losing by turning down bribes. The compensation consists of a “social package,” analogous to those at commercial firms, and a “separate range of payment for labor taking into consideration possible corrupt compensation.” the sum of that compensation is to be proportionate to the potential for corruption. Naryshkin told Kommersant that budget expenditure on salaries will not increase. Rather, heads of agencies will locate funds for the compensation packages independently.
There are more familiar methods of fighting corruption in the program as well, such as audits and video surveillance of the offices of officials on the list. Their telephones can be tapped without court order even if it is in the contract. The innovation is the requirement that complete information on all the officials' contacts in matters related to his service and a limit in the contract on the amount of money an official may have on his person while at his place of employment.
Yuzhakov told Kommersant that the program was “so strict that it borders on being a violation of human rights.” In reality, everything depends on the makeup of the anticorruption commissions. The wording of the president's order leaves no hope that they will be independent. They are to be made up of members of the leadership of agencies and personnel departments and outside experts. The experts will come only from “scientific organizations or educational institutions” whose activities are related to government service. They constitute no less than 25 percent of the commissions, and their identities will be kept secret.
Naryshkin's program may be used as a response to accusations by international organizations of the lack of anticorruption measures. In its June report on government management, the World Bank gave Russia six points on a seven-point scale for the susceptibility of officials to bribery. That report could not be ignored. The Russian Interior Ministry issued a special statement on the erroneousness of the report.
Petr Netreba, Dmitry Butrin, Arina Sharipova
All the Article in Russian as of July 30, 2007
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