Medvedev sets out anti-corruption drive

Moscow: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday said he wanted a package of anti-corruption legislation in place by next year, stepping up his campaign against a problem he says threatens national security.

One of Medvedev's first steps when he took over as president from his mentor Vladimir Putin in May was to order his officials to draft a strategy for fighting corruption.

Medvedev has said the plan will be based on three pillars: creating incentives for officials to work honestly, making sure that corrupt officials do not escape punishment and changing the national mentality, which has traditionally tolerated graft.

But he said the answer was not a Kremlin-orchestrated purge of corrupt officials as in the past but a broader approach, that would include ceding powers to the private sector.

Medvedev is not the first Kremlin leader to promise to root out corruption, but his predecessors have failed to deliver any substantial progress. "When the plan is finalised, we need to switch to legislative work so that the plan becomes a set of laws in, say, half a year," he told lawmakers in the Federation Council, or upper house of parliament.

"Russia should start the new year with modern anti-corruption legislation of which we will not be ashamed."

Way of life

"Corruption has become a way of life for a huge number of people," Medvedev said. "Those who accept bribes carry no responsibility. This should not be the case."

A 2007 index of global corruption prepared by Transparency International, a Berlin-based non-governmental organisation, ranked Russia on the same level as Togo, Angola and Indonesia A senior Russian prosecutor estimated earlier this month that corrupt officials were pocketing $120 billion (Dh441 billion) a year, a sum equivalent to one third of Russia's budget.