Go After Corrupt Officials, Russian Lawmakers Urged

To the new parliament’s overwhelming must-do list, Russia’s top cops Tuesday sought to add another urgent item: anti-corruption legislation.

Calling corruption a threat to the very nation, four members of the Interior Ministry brass urged lawmakers to pass a bill prescribing punishment for wayward officials, from the traffic policeman who takes bribes to tear up tickets to the regional governor in cahoots with organized crime.

“Even if the law is imperfect, if it is adopted it will at least be a declaration” that the state plans to crack down on corruption, pleaded Maj. Gen. Nikolai I. Getman, who directs the ministry’s transportation sector. “It is better to have a law with drawbacks than no law at all.”

Over the past four years, Russian legislators have drafted at least two anti-corruption laws but not managed to get a final version approved by both houses of parliament and the president. If they try again this session, they will have to squeeze the issue between other pressing concerns, such as overhauling the convoluted tax code, restructuring the legal system and settling disputes over ownership of land once claimed by the state.

Enthusiastic about their new powers, Russian legislators have a good track record of churning out laws. But they’ve been less successful at implementing their highflying rhetoric.

Admonishing the upper chamber of parliament in a vigorous speech Tuesday, President Boris N. Yeltsin noted that he had been forced to veto more than a quarter of the 400 laws passed during the last two years.

“It is necessary to improve the quality of lawmaking,” he told the deputies sternly. Then Yeltsin suggested they start off by debating “a federal law on the procedure of considering and adopting laws.”

Fed up with such procedural delays, the Interior Ministry authorities called their news conference to ask the media to shame lawmakers into finally taking on corruption. They promised to hold weekly briefings to announce the official misdeeds their troops track down--and to publicize the bad guys who manage to bribe their way out of punishments.

While they did not address the notorious level of corruption in their own ranks, the Interior Ministry directors asserted that abuse of office in general is soaring.

Last year, they tallied 14,200 cases of “abuse of office,” including nearly 5,000 bribery charges. And those statistics include just the crooks who are caught--representing as little as 2% of the overall problem, said Col. Kuzma L. Shalenkov, deputy chief for economic crimes.

To address the problem, the Interior Ministry authorities suggested requiring every officeholder to disclose his sources of income each year. They urged lawmakers to write a complete job description for each civil servant, so citizens would know where to turn for help instead of blindly bribing their way through the bureaucracy. And they recommended harsher punishment for those convicted of transgressions.