Power To The Party

Corruption Still Flourishes under Putin

On February 6, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti released some of the findings of a research project called ???The Nature and Structure of Corruption in Russie.??? Carried out by the Institute for Public Projects (INOP) and the Institute for Comparative Social Research (CESSI), the research revealed that the highest level of corruption is observable in the tax collection service, while the recipients of the largest bribes are members of judiciary, the same judiciary responsible for ensuring that the financial and banking regulations are enforced through the courts. As expected, law-enforcement bodies and public health get also colossal ???cuts.???

The black economy, grown large by dint of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, accounts for 40-50 per cent of the economic activity in Russia and no Kremlin government has shown the will to fight corruption because it is happening on such a massive and all-pervasive scale that it became a norm rather than an exception.

In 2006, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank organization headquartered in Washington, argued that Russia is already a ???criminal syndicalist??? state, comprising corrupt officials at all levels of government, successful full-time professional criminals (the Russian Mafia), and businessmen who seem to regard Russian law and Western norms of commerce, respectively, not as barriers to be respected but as mere obstacles to circumvent.

I have read through the comments and must say that most of you are missing the point of the article. You must remeber that democracy is a concept of freedom,of choice, what works for one country in their time-line may not exactly fit into another country atthat particular time. The concept of democacy is very new to Russia, and yes there is democracy in Russia. It may not be the type of democracy that is in the States. America is not imposes its views on the whole world. America is about freedom. Dispite anyone's view on the war in Iraq there are many people in Iraq that are very happy and grateful that America is about freedom.

First of all, t9900, you should know that I was a little child when communism ended in my country, so I wasn't "brainwashed" by commie ideology. And if you read comments more carefully you will see that we have nothing against democracy, moreover, we support it. But are you sure that Bush's policy can be defined as "democratic"??? Don't you see that "democracy" in the USA is just the myth, illusion??? We are not against democracy, but we are against that America imposes its point of view to the whole world instead of solve its own problems.

Funny hate comments against democracy coming from people who claim they are not commies. Didn't communism in Russia end more than 10 years ago? I didn't know people could stay brainwashed for thst long.

I absolutely agree with viva, that's not for Americans to settle the Russian problems. I'm a Russian and I'm proud of it and it's my own duty to help my country in future and make all the possible things now. Americans can't evaluate our life situation properly, because they have their own problems that still remain unsettled, because your president has interests in Iran and pays no attention to nation at all. So I can make a conclusion that you simply have jealosy of our intelligent and compitent president.
As regards your "bombs", MR. MICKEY, I really suppose that it is silly to threaten with them (where is your "democratic" approach?), because Russia is not a country to be destroyed with bombs, Russia is based on people spirit and particular mentality.

Hey, Mr.Mickey, do you understand what you have said??? Russia isn't a commie country anymore and you can't compare USSR and Russia. You don't live in Russia, how can you judge about it?
I don't deny the problems that Russia has nowadays, but it's not up to you to say the such things. Maybe you should firstly solve problems in your country which were caused by you so-called democracy? Sit and don't interfere in the problems of our country!!!

Owen Matthews, the more you???ll be communicating with people like Nemtsova the more you will get into chimeras about political life in Russia.

The virtues of democracy exactly were in lack during the time when the husband of Nemtsova was in Kremlin, when hiding behind democracy the bunch of thieves was taking to pieces the whole country.

People like Nemtsovs must be just missing the time when it was possible to steal without being punished for that.

That must be laying in the core of their understanding of democracy. The chaos where the sneakiest can filch something.

First of all Mr Mickey Mouse, I'd like to point out that Russia and mostly the whole world disagrees with your fairy-tale democracy. You created this instrument to rule the world, democracy as itself does not exist. Tell me, is it democracy to bomb your opponents? May be you can bomb Columbia - they kill your youths by selling drugs to them, may be you can bomb Mexico - because there are to many immigrants flowing to your country. it is a sign of a weak man! Your democracy is a www totalitarism! think before bombing anyone else the country of Mickey Mouses, because the Big Russian Bear and Chinese dragon are coming!!! .

I always had a degree of mistrust toward Putin but always thought him to be an worldly, intelligent, man who wanted to bring Russia into the 21st Century. He is now making all the same blunders Brezhnev made in the 70's. Using high oil prices to create a short term illusion of prosperity and national power and by playing on ordinary Russian's insecurities created by the traumas of the 1990's trying to ressurect the U.S. as a bogeyman. It is odd how history repeats itself. Granted the Bush administration is not blameless, they spoiled US-Russian relations like they have with the rest of the world but Putin alone is to blame for curbing freedoms. censoring the news media and trying to make Russia a one party state.