Global Integrity Report: Russian Federation - 2010

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

HIGHLIghts

The Russian Federation has neither gained nor lost ground in the Global Integrity Report: 2010; little has changed since our last assessment in 2008. On paper, the country has a solid mechanism in place for the public to request information from the government, yet freedom of the media remains problematic, which is especially visible in the ruling class' privileged position in the national media. Russia also exhibits a significant implementation gap, meaning that many laws on the books are poorly enforced. Indicators assessing the ability to form political parties, election integrity, and political financing transparency all point to this challenge of implementation. Government conflicts of interest safeguards and checks and balances are inadequate, with effective oversight of the executive a major challenges. Citizen input to the budget process is virtually non-existant, and there is no legislative committee to provide oversight of public funds. While government procurement has become more regulated and transparent, a professional civil service remains elusive. The national ombudsman and supreme audit institution are relatively effective, although the same cannot be said for law enforcement, which faces routine political interference with its work.

From the Reporter's Notebook: The reporter left his apartment to meet with a source, apparently planning to be out for only an hour or two. He never returned. His colleagues launched their own inquiry and soon learned that he had been probing a local police anti-corruption squad that, instead of solving real crimes, used an agent provocateur to set up phony cases, in order to extract bribes. “He published an article about their methods, and their methods allegedly were to provoke innocent people into giving bribes,” the reporter’s mother, Rimma Maksimova, recalls.