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Bastrykin speaking in a recent interview. He said 3,329 law enforcers were charged with corruption last year.
The head of the Interior Ministry’s internal investigation department, Oleg Goncharov, said Thursday that police officers committed 2,500 crimes in the first half of this year, or 10 percent more than a year earlier, Interfax reported.
Of the offenses committed on duty, 22 percent were bribe-taking, Goncharov said at a news conference to discuss the work of the internal investigation service. He also called for police chiefs to declare their income and property.
Speaking at the conference, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev referred to the supermarket shootings by police major Denis Yevsyukov in April, calling them a “tragedy,” Interfax reported.
Earlier this week, he said those recommending people for senior police posts would be held responsible for their actions.
Nurgaliyev also mentioned the arrest earlier this month of a senior Interior Ministry consultant, Alexander Zharkov, who is accused of receiving an $850,000 bribe “on the street outside the ministry” to halt an investigation.
“It’s an unprecedented example of betraying the interests of the service,” he said.
Goncharov complained that police convicted of crimes were not receiving adequate sentences. “Even though the majority commit crimes classified by lawmakers as serious, fewer than half of the officers convicted are sentenced to real imprisonment,” he said.
In an interview with Vedomosti published Thursday, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin said policemen were by far the most often charged with corruption, followed by doctors and teachers.
“Statistics show that the most corrupt spheres are the security services (3,329 people were charged in 2008), public health (433 people) and education (378 people),” Bastrykin said.
He said, however, that he “treats such statements with skepticism,” calling corruption “quite latent.”
He also criticized the legislation on corruption, saying it does not include a clear definition of what constitutes a crime. He called for investigators to be given up to 30 days to investigate corruption before pressing charges.
In the first quarter of this year, 4,155 corruption investigations were opened, up 19 percent year on year, he said. In 2008, there were 10,000 criminal investigations into corruption, an increase of 1.6 percent from 2007.
Bastrykin also called for the confiscation of assets belonging to people convicted of economic crimes, even if they signed them over to relatives. “Let’s say we proved that an official stole and with the loot built a big estate, signed to his mother-in-law. That means we should evict the mother-in-law from her dacha and give the estate to the state,” he told Vedomosti.
The Justice Ministry earlier this month announced a competition for experts to come up with ways of fighting corruption among state officials on the web site Zakupki.gov.ru. It asks experts to come up with methods to cut corruption by at least 50 percent. The tender is worth 1.6 million rubles (about $50,000) and experts have until Oct. 10 to submit their recommendations.
