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Timeline
July 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as president of the Russian Republic after winning the first popular presidential election in Russia's history.
December 1991 – Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns. The Soviet Union officially dissolves the next day.
October 1992 – President Yeltsin orders a massive campaign to privatize over one-third of the state's assets by issuing vouchers to all Russian citizens, who swap them at privatization auctions in exchange for shares of ownership in the assets. The voucher system leads to the rise of "oligarchs"-lucky, clever or politically connected entrepreneurs who acquire state assets at very low prices and attain enormous wealth and power.
October 1993 – Anti-Yeltsin forces attack facilities around Moscow and break into the Parliament building. Troops recapture the building the next day after a bloody battle.
December 1993 – Boris Yeltsin grants a special subsidy allowing nonprofit groups and sports organizations tax breaks on the importation of vodka and cigarettes. The subsidy will lead to corruption and organized crime-related violence among sports organizations.
December 1993 – Voters approve a new constitution that outlines a mixed presidential-parliamentary system and declares individual rights and freedoms "the supreme value" of the state.
December 1994 – Russia sends troops into the Republic of Chechnya to quell a separatist rebellion. During years of on-and-off fighting, both Russian and Chechen forces commit numerous human rights violations, and Russian authorities impose strict controls on reporters' access to the war zones.
April 1995 – The Federal Security Service (FSB—Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti), successor to the KGB, is established. The FSB will face accusations of violating suspects' rights, consorting with criminal gangs and orchestrating the 1999 apartment bombings that killed more than 300 people.
July 1996 – A Moscow newspaper publishes the transcript of a conversation linking several of Boris Yeltsin's closest advisers, including his sports minister and two security service officials, to organized crime.
October 1996 – President Yeltsin forms an emergency high-level commission to crack down on tax evasion. The commission is headed by Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin and includes the FSB, the prosecutor-general's office, and the Foreign Intelligence Service. It proves largely ineffective.
November 1997 – President Yeltsin removes Anatoly Chubais from his post as finance minister after it is revealed that Chubais and three other top officials received a US$90,000 book advance in an alleged "sweetheart" deal.
May 1998 – Alfred Kohn, former head of Russia's privatization program, is charged with illegally enriching himself and colleagues with state funds.
June 1998 – Top officials in the State Statistics Committee are arrested and charged with manipulating economic data to help companies evade taxes and sell rival companies' classified financial data.
November 1998 – Former FSB agents publicly accuse the agency's leaders of ordering agents to perform contract murders on behalf of criminal gangs. Investigative journalist Alexander Minkin publishes a transcript of a 1996 conversation in which he claims former Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais discusses concealing evidence of contract murders committed by Kremlin security chiefs.
February 1999 – Former Justice Minister Valentin Kovalev is arrested and charged with embezzlement. Kovalev is eventually convicted and sentenced to probation in lieu of nine years in prison.
September 1999 – Russia's chief prosecutor announces that President Yeltsin, his two daughters, and former Kremlin finance chief Pavel Borodin are the subjects of an investigation into an alleged bribery scheme involving Swiss construction firm Mabetex. Russian prosecutors close the case in December 2000 for lack of evidence, but Swiss authorities continue their investigation of Borodin, who is convicted of money laundering in March 2002 by a Swiss court.
December 1999 – Alexander Nikitin is acquitted of espionage charges arising from his reporting on environmental hazards posed by the Russian Navy's nuclear fleet.
March 2000 – Former FSB chief Vladimir Putin is elected president. He grants prosecutorial immunity to Yeltsin and his immediate family, who are being investigated for their role in an alleged bribery/money-laundering scheme involving Kremlin repair contractors.
July 2000 – In a national address, Putin announces he will clamp down on the oligarchs and rebellious regional governors. In the days that follow, the tax police pursue criminal actions against Russian oil giant Lukoil, press and broadcasting conglomerate Media-Most, car manufacturer Avtovaz and financial conglomerate Interros. The audit chamber of the Parliament launches an investigation of electric monopoly UES.
February 2001 – The state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, wins a controlling interest in NTV, one of Russia's last privately owned national television stations and a staunch critic of President Putin.
March 2001 – Atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov resigns when the Duma investigates whether a company he established profited from U.S. government contracts to improve Russian nuclear plant safety.
May 2001 – President Putin heeds calls to reform Gazprom's corrupt management by firing Gazprom head Rem Vyakhirev, a powerful holdover from the Yeltsin era.
July 2001 – The law on political parties imposes new requirements and restrictions on political parties. Over the next year and a half, the Parliament passes other laws that increase the power of political parties and regulate campaign finance, electoral procedure and media coverage of elections.
December 2001 – Parliament targets corruption in the court system, approving a fivefold increase in judges' salaries and limits on judges' immunity from corruption charges.
January 2002 – Railways minister Nikolai Aksyonenko is fired when the Duma Audit Chamber reports that, among other improprieties, his ministry fixed freight rates to benefit companies owned by his son and nephew.
January 2002 – A court decision shuts down TV-6, Russia's last independent television network and frequent critic of President Putin. TV-6 will continue operating as TVS until the government shuts it down in June 2003, citing the station's financial and management problems.
July 2002 – A new Russian code of criminal procedure provides greater judicial oversight of arrests and searches, and gives new rights to suspects during pretrial detention and interrogation.
August 2002 – President Putin issues a decree outlining a code of conduct for public officials, requiring them to obey the law, serve the public efficiently and courteously, remain politically neutral and avoid conflicts of interest.
October 2002 – Chechen separatist rebels seize a Moscow theater and hold hundreds of patrons hostage. The government's rescue effort results in the death of more than 160 people, including almost 130 hostages. President Putin vetoes a law passed soon afterward that greatly restricted the media's ability to report on such events.
October 2002 – Parliament adopts a money-laundering law that prompts the Financial Action Task Force, an international body that monitors money laundering, to remove Russia from its blacklist.
November 2002 – The Duma passes a draft law on anti-corruption, a bill that, for the first time in post-Soviet Russia, defines the terms "corrupt act" and "bribery." It also extends criminal liability to individuals in the government, military, and business communities as well as candidates for public office and leaders of political parties, and requires top federal bureaucrats to make their financial information public every year.
March 2003 – President Putin restructures his security bureaucracy, expanding the powers of the FSB and establishing a new anti-drug trafficking agency. Putin also transfers the tax police's authority to the Interior Ministry.
April 2003 – Parliamentarian Sergei Yushenkov is gunned down at his home in Moscow, the third assassination of a major political figure since August 2002 and the ninth Member of Parliament to be murdered since 1994.
July 2003 – Georgy Oleinik, the Defense Ministry's former financial chief, is convicted of abuse of office and sentenced to five years in prison for an improper sale of Defense Ministry domestic bonds. In a separate case in 2002, Oleinik was convicted of misappropriating US$450 million.
October 2003 – Mikhail Khodorkovsky, regarded as the richest man in Russia and a major financer of the reformist Yabloko Party, is arrested on fraud, forgery, embezzlement, and tax evasion charges. Khodorkovsky is convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison in May 2005.
October 2003 – The Constitutional Court strikes down a law that allowed the government to close down media outlets providing "biased" coverage of elections.
December 2003 – The United Russia Party wins a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, handing President Putin an overwhelmingly supportive legislature.
February 2004 – Members of the Association of Small Businesses and human rights organizations form "Antikorruptsiya," an anti-corruption association that will pose questions to various public officials, publish the responses (or lack thereof) in the mass media and, if necessary, take cases to court.
March 2004 – Putin wins a second presidential term.
April 2004 – Parliament establishes a special anti-corruption commission to handle citizens' complaints and review legislation for flaws that might invite corruption.
September 2004 – More than 300 people, mostly children, are killed during Chechen militants' three-day siege of a school in southern Russia. In the aftermath, Putin makes regional governors, who had previously been directly elected, subject to appointment and confirmation by the central government.
July 2005 – A Russian think-tank study finds that bribery in Russia has increased tenfold since 2001, totaling US$316 billion a year.
July 2005 – Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is charged with fraudulently acquiring property shortly before he was ousted by Putin in 2004. The charges are believed to be retaliation against Kasyanov's frequent criticism of Putin.
October 2005 – Oleg Alexeyev, deputy head of the Federal Tax Service's department of credit organizations, and Alexei Mishin, a senior Central Bank official, are charged with receiving a US$5.3 million bribe.
January 2006 – Putin signs a law giving authorities sweeping new powers to monitor and punish NGOs.
May 2006 – Putin fires the head of the customs service and several other security agency officials, ostensibly to rid his government of corruption.
July 2006 – Putin fires Alexei Barinov, governor of the Nenets autonomous district, after Barinov is arrested and charged with fraud and embezzlement while serving as CEO of a mining company in the late 1990s. Although his prosecution is believed to be politically motivated, Barinov is the latest in a long line of regional governors who have been investigated or convicted of corruption in recent years.
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