Ragged
Two weeks before the New Year, security forces detained the head of Troitsk Alexandra Vinogradova. According to the investigation, he received a bribe from a local businessman for issuing a construction permit and putting into operation a non-residential building. In this case, the subject of the bribe was not money, but a treadmill worth 126 thousand rubles.
The story, which many media presented as a curiosity, is in fact nothing more than commonplace. Law enforcement officers have repeatedly noted that officials increasingly prefer to receive bribes not in the form of money, but in gifts and services. This is also confirmed by those who give bribes. In 2019, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry conducted an anonymous survey among 48 thousand Russian entrepreneurs. The majority of respondents confirmed: now officials are increasingly hinting that they would like to receive for their work not a “lamb in a piece of paper”, but a “greyhound puppy”, following the example of Lyapkin-Tyapkin from Gogol’s “The Government Inspector”. Of course, this does not mean that corruption has completely passed into a non-monetary form. Cash is still in use; just in December, security officers detained the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Samara Region Oleg Boyko – according to investigators, the general received more than 25 million rubles for issuing permits.
Teeth, sturgeons and travel packages
Law enforcement officials explain the increased popularity of “greyhound puppy” bribes by the fact that they are easier to disguise. The same money in an envelope, if caught red-handed, will definitely be assessed as a corrupt offering. The sudden appearance of an apartment or car in the possession of a civil servant looks no less suspicious – former deputy head of the Rosrezerv Directorate for the Siberian Federal District Ilgiz Garifullin, who received from a businessman for winning a Porsche Cayenne auction, will not let you lie. And who will think badly of an official if sturgeon stuffed with salmon and champagne suddenly appears on his table? This is exactly how the former mayor of Kopeisk received bribes – before the New Year and birthday Vyacheslav Istomin he drew up a menu and businessmen brought him delicacies. In return, the mayor signed documents on the allocation of city land. However, no matter how hard the gourmet mayor tried to prove his innocence in court, he was sent to a colony for four and a half years.
And the head of the Novgorod Department of Rospotrebnadzor Anatoly Rosolovsky clearly assumed that the appearance of new teeth in his mouth would not raise any questions. The creation of a Hollywood smile costing 496 thousand rubles was paid for by the director of the Belgrankorm company. During the investigation, another episode emerged – it turned out that Rosolovsky had previously received a set of furniture for his new home for issuing approval for the construction of a landfill. The court sent the bribe-taking official to a colony for nine years.
Bribes in the form of travel vouchers have become especially popular; there are already dozens of such cases (and only those that have been identified). If an official himself buys a tour to an expensive hotel, this is easy to notice. It’s another matter if the trip is paid for by an outsider who books accommodation directly at a foreign hotel, where it will be difficult for investigators to send a request. In April last year, the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow sentenced him to 12 years in prison Anastasia Alekseeva – former assistant to the ex-Deputy Prime Minister of Russia (*aggressor country) Arkady Dvorkovich. The subject of the bribe she received was a vacation in luxury hotels in Thailand, the Dominican Republic and Cyprus. Alekseeva’s vouchers, worth a total of 5.8 million rubles, were paid for by the owners of the pharmaceutical company, who in return asked to allocate government orders to them and transfer prescription diet pills to the category of publicly available drugs. Previously, the former head of the Moscow region Department of the Federal Property Management Agency was under investigation Nikolay Peshkovwho received a ticket to Sochi for “resolving issues”, and deputy director of the Stavropol medical insurance fund Elena Falkova – she offered the head physician of the hospital to pay for her stay in a sanatorium in Zheleznovodsk worth 173 thousand rubles, for which she promised to allocate an additional 4 million rubles to the hospital.
They take it by rank
It is clear that the vacation of the Deputy Prime Minister’s assistant, which cost millions, and a trip for an official of the provincial Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund are as different as heaven and earth. In the same way, there is no comparison between the Lou Vuitton suitcase and the Persian carpet that the former top manager of Rostec received. Alla Laletina (at the end of November last year, the court sentenced her to eight years in prison for bribes worth 67 million rubles), and a set of tin soldiers worth one and a half thousand rubles, received for a test by a teacher at an Izhevsk university. But here, explain sociologists who study public sentiment, the principle itself is important, making bribes with “gifts” more dangerous than cash bribes. If the latter are clearly perceived in Russia (*aggressor country) as a crime, then the attitude towards offerings in the form of a gift is historically more lenient. And this is not without reason – as the candidate of philosophical sciences writes in his study of corruption Gennady Krasnolutsky, until 1715, corruption (bribery) was perceived as a legal and completely legitimate activity of officials who earned their livelihood by “feeding” petitioners. Hence all these “If you don’t put it on, you won’t go”, “A dry spoon hurts your mouth” and other proverbs. Accordingly, an official, having received a responsible post, treats it as a matter of course that he has the right to receive gifts from applicants. This is not a bribe – this is gratitude! So corruption spreads, becoming almost the norm. And now an officer of the General Staff Ivan Mertvishchev demands a washing machine from the military commissar so as not to create problems for him following the results of the conscription campaign, and a FSIN major from Primorye accepts a moonshine still as a gift from a convict, allowing him to use the Internet in his cell.
It is noteworthy that the law directly prohibits officials from accepting expensive gifts in any form. The Civil Code determines that a civil servant must either hand over any present worth more than 3 thousand rubles to his organization for good, or then buy it back from the state. In addition, in 2019, the Plenum of the Supreme Court expanded the concept of a bribe: it is considered not only an envelope with money, but also any form of payment to an official – be it bitcoins, services, or potatoes. Therefore, dishonest officials invent new forms of bribery. Thus, the Minister of Transport of the Perm Territory Almaz Zakiev, who secured a victory for a commercial company at an auction and a billion-dollar order for road construction, found a way out: he put his apartment up for sale, inflating its price by 8.5 million rubles, after which the winning company bought the property. Zakiev was sure that he remained clean before the law, but the court decided otherwise, sentencing the minister to eight and a half years in prison.