© S. A. Khvalev

Russian anti-corruption legislation began to form around the early 2000s. The core normative legal act in the sphere of fighting against corruption is the Federal Law No. 273-FZ as of December 25, 2008 “On Combating Corruption”. This Federal Law is one of the achievements of the administrative reform carried out in the Russian Federation since 2003 in order to increase efficiency of the system of state bodies and create favorable conditions for business entities to exercise their rights and interests.

The current Federal Law has three main conceptual features:

1) The Federal law is a conceptual document in the sphere of anti-corruption activities. It stipulates the general basis for combating corruption in Russia, provides cross-cutting terminology for all anti-corruption legislation, and defines the goals, objectives and principles of combating corruption in the Russian Federation.

2) The Federal law is a comprehensive document. It defines the entire range of anti-corruption measures, and also regulates the foundations of each anti-corruption measure.

3) The Federal law is a basic document. This legal act is a normative basis of the entire system of anti-corruption legislation in the Russian Federation.

First of all, the given Federal Law describes in detail the notion of “corruption”. So, the Russian legislator understands corruption as abuse of official capacity, giving bribe, acceptance of bribe, malfeasance in office, commercial bribery or other illegal use by a person of his/her official position contrary to the legitimate interests of society and the state in order to obtain benefits in the form of money, values, other property or property-related services, other property rights for himself/herself or for the third parties or illegal submission of such benefits to a specified person by other persons, as well as the same acts on behalf of or in the interests of a corporate body.

Taking into account rather broad and detailed interpretation of the notion of “corruption”, the Federal Law defines a considerably wide system of activities to combat corruption. At this point it is necessary to begin with the fact that the legislator has attributed to the range of the bodies to counter corruption almost all the bodies with legal capacity and competence, among which these are also state and municipal authorities, civil institutions, persons and corporate bodies.

The objectives of the mentioned bodies include countering corruption in the Russian Federation. At the same time, it should be commended that the legislator defined “anti-corruption” in a very balanced way, including in it the actions aimed not only at fighting corruption, but also at preventing and stopping it from happening in Russian society. In particular, according to the Federal Law, anti-corruption is the activities for prevention of corruption, including identification and further removal of the causes of corruption (prevention of corruption), identification, prevention, repression, detection and investigation of corruption offenses (combating corruption), for minimization and (or) liquidation of the consequences of corruption offenses.

It is extremely important that the Federal Law stipulates the basic principles of combating corruption in the Russian Federation. And these are not only general legal principles (legality, promotion and protection of human and civil rights and freedoms, the inevitability of responsibility for an offense), but also exclusively specialized principles that reflect particular nature of counteracting corruption precisely. The main principles among the mare the following ones:

1) Publicity and openness of the activity of state bodies and local government bodies;

2) Comprehensive use of political, organizational, outreach, social and economic, legal, special and other measures;

3) Implementation of measures to prevent corruption;

4) State cooperation with civil institutions, international organizations and persons.

According to the idea of the Federal Law, Russian international cooperation in this field is an important point in the fight against corruption. At the same time, the Federal Law establishes rather large goals of such interaction at the interstate level. In particular, such cooperation is necessary for:

1) Detection of persons suspected (accused) of committing corruption offenses, their location, as well as location of other persons involved in corruption crimes;

2) Identification of property obtained as a result of corruption offenses, or being a means of committing them;

3) Information exchange regarding counter corruption issues;

4) Coordination of activities for prevention of corruption and fight against corruption.

Proclaiming the priority of the principle to prevent corruption, the Federal Law defines specific measures to prevent corruption from occurring. So, according to the Federal Law, corruption prevention is carried out by implementing such basic measures as:

1) Development of intolerance to corrupt behavior in society;

2) Anti-corruption examination of legal acts and their drafts;

3) Specification of higher qualification requirements for citizens applying for filling positions of state or municipal employees;

4) Stipulation of the failure to provide information or to submit knowingly inaccurate or incomplete information about income, expenses, property, as well as to provide deliberately false information about income, expenses, property of spouses and minor children, as a basis for dismissal of persons from occupied posts;

5) Adoption of the rule in the practice of personnel administration, according to which the long, impeccable performance of public duties by a state or municipal employee is taken into account when appointing him/her to a higher position;

6) Development of institutions of public and parliamentary control over compliance with the Russian legislation on combating corruption.

It is remarkable that the Federal Law contains a set of program regulation, i.e. it defines specific goals to be achieved in the near future. These program goals are presented in the Federal Law by defining the activity areas of state bodies for increasing the effectiveness of countering corruption. These areas include:

1) Establishment of unified state anti-corruption policy;

2) Organization of mechanisms for interaction between law enforcement and other state bodies with public and parliamentary commissions on anti-corruption issues, as well as with citizens and civil institutions;

3) adoption of legislative and other measures aimed at involving state and municipal employees, as well as citizens, in participation in the fight against corruption in a more active way, at forming a negative attitude towards corruption in society;

4) Organization of mechanisms for public control over the activity of authorities;

5) Introduction of anti-corruption standards, that is establishing in the relevant field of activity a unified system of prohibitions, restrictions and permissions that ensure the prevention of corruption in this field;

6) Unification of the rights of state and municipal employees, prohibitions and duties;

7) Providing citizens with access to information about the activity of state authorities and local government;

8) Ensuring media independence;

9) Strict adherence to the principles of judicial independence and noninterference in judicial activity;

10) Ensuring work ethics, openness and objectivity in the procurement of goods, works, and services for meeting state or municipal needs;

11) Advancing the regulation on use of state and municipal property, state and municipal resources;

12) Increasing the level of remuneration and social security of state and municipal employees;

13) Strengthening international cooperation and developing effective forms of cooperation with law enforcement agencies and with special services, with financial intelligence units and other competent authorities of foreign states and international organizations;

14) Delegation of some functions of state bodies to self-regulatory organizations, as well as to other non-governmental organizations.

It should be highlighted that it is the current Federal Law that regulates directly and in a rather detailed way three separate duties subject to strict execution by state (municipal) employees, and in some cases by other persons.

At first, the Federal Law regulates in detail the prohibition for certain categories of persons to open and have accounts (deposits), to store cash and valuables in foreign banks located outside the territory of the Russian Federation (this measure was regulated in more detail by the Federal Law No. 79-FZ as of May 7, 2013 “On the prohibition of certain categories of persons to open and have accounts (deposits), to store cash and valuables in foreign banks located outside the territory of the Russian Federation and to own and (or) use foreign financial instruments”). It has been stipulated that failure to comply with this prohibition causes early dismissal based on the loss of trust.

Secondly, the Federal Law regulates for persons the procedure to provide employers with information about their income (expenses), property and property obligations, as well as income (expenses), property and property obligations of their spouse and minor children.

Thirdly, the Federal Law sets the obligation of state and municipal officials to notify about the appeal cases of inducing them to commit a corruption offense. Thus, it is stipulated that an officer is obliged to notify the employer, prosecution authorities or other state bodies of all cases when any person contacted him/her with inducing to commit corruption offenses. It was determined that non-fulfillment of this duty by an officer is an offense resulting in his/her dismissal from service or bringing him/her to other types of responsibility.

Besides, the Federal Law addresses conflicts of interest between certain persons. In particular, a conflict of interest refers to a situation in which the personal interest (direct or indirect) of a person who acts in a position, that requires an obligation to take measures to prevent and resolve a conflict of interest, affects or may affect objective and fair performance of his/her official duties (exercise of authority). In its turn, personal interest (simplified wording) is a possibility of obtaining material benefits for a person and (or) persons closely related to him/her (parents, spouses, children, brothers, sisters, as well as brothers, sisters, parents, children of spouses and spouses of children), for citizens or organizations which are linked toa person and (or) persons who are in close relationship or connection with him/herby property, corporate or other close relations.

The obligation to take measures in order to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest is imposed, first of all, on employees at various levels, as well as on their employers. Preventing or resolving a conflict of interest may take form of changing the official position of a person who is a party of the conflict of interest, as well as his/her removal from the performance of official duties and (or) his/her refusal from financial reward, which was the cause of the conflict of interest.

Federal law determines that failure to take measures to prevent or resolve a conflict of interest by a person who is a party of the conflict of interest is an offense causing his/her dismissal.

As a conclusion of this overview, it should be noted that to our opinion the Federal Law is quite successful in terms of comprehensiveness of legal regulation.