Official handling of international bribery scandals dent Russia’s image
Major corruption scandals across the globe involving Russia and foreign businesses based in the country have again highlighted the Kremlin’s urgent necessity to put in place a new and more effective official policy, which will make corruption in general and bribery, grafts and kickbacks, its most frequent manifestations in particular, a detestable conduct and economically unprofitable practice for government officials, individuals, local and foreign corporations in the country.
As a practice, corruption is endemic in Russia, and therefore, frequent bribery charges do not so much generate a sensation as most citizens see ‘obligatorily voluntary financial enticement’ as the only effective stimulus that is capable of getting the lethargic bureaucracy to do its official duty. However, the growing globalization and internationalization of the egregious practice to include the world’s leading corporations operating in Russia have now brought the issue to the global limelight. This stems from the fact the several multinationals that had been forced to use the dubious tactic to “conduct and promote their businesses in Russia the only way possible” have now come under growing public scrutiny and legal prosecutions in their countries.
The most resonant cases included the revelations by the U.S. Justice Department in its bribery charges against Daimler AG for spending millions in kickbacks across the globe to boost its sales, including in Russia, and Germany’s similar charges against Hewlett-Packard for granting kickbacks to Russian officials to secure sales contracts with government agencies. Others included a Munich court’s April sentencing of two Siemens AG executives to various jail terms for dishing out over 2mln euros in grafts to Russian telecom companies CEOs and IKEA sacking its Russia subsidiary expatriate executives for allegedly turning a blind eye to their Russian staff’s bribing local officials to commission one of the Swedish furniture giant’s hypermarkets in the country. All these cases and revelations have effectively shown that the twin social evils of corruption and bribery have now successfully spread their ugly tentacles beyond their traditional victims on the domestic market to include the world’s leading multinationals operating in the country.
For fairness sake, it must be noted here that Russia does not hold an exclusive or monopolistic right over corruption and bribery in the world. However, the uniqueness of the Russian case is the fact that government agencies, including even law-enforcement agencies, whose direct responsibilities include fighting these practices at least in the state sector to protect government interests in tenders and other official business interactions with companies and individuals, are reportedly not just simply involved in these nefarious acts, but are, indeed, the main recipients of such kickbacks in most cases.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the regular citations of Russian government officials as one of the key recipients of kickbacks in these international bribery scandals, court cases and jail sentencing of top employees of foreign companies in their native countries have not elicited any legal reactions from the Russian Prosecutor’s General Office and Internal Affairs Ministry, the two official agencies directly responsible for fighting such crimes in the country. Similarly, there have also been no official political reactions from the Kremlin, White House and other top Russian government agencies, whose duties include giving directions to relevant state agencies on issues to handle as top priorities. Maybe the revelation of the state officials involved in these high-profile scandals is not in the government’s list of priority problems.
This is why this collective ‘loud and deafening silence’ among state officials raises the rhetoric issue of their being collective accomplices to the practice, at least, of being guilty of gross criminal inactions, as stipulated by the relevant clause in the Russian Criminal Code. This is because if foreigners had confessed on oath in foreign courts to giving grafts/kickbacks to a person or groups of people in Russia, one would have expected the relevant Russian law-enforcement agencies to act swiftly against such ‘suspects’ since most of the preliminary investigative work had already been done for them by their foreign colleagues.
If that is not a big enough a motive for legal actions, then the onus is still on the Russian government in general, and its law-enforcement agencies in particular, to urgently satisfy the growing public expectations to know the real recipients of these multibillion kickbacks. And also whether or not the decisions taken by these recipients under the influence of such ‘serious financial arguments’ have in any way or any form damaged the government, and by extension, the taxpayers’ interests. Or maybe, the government and law-enforcement agencies are simply afraid of opening the Pandora’s Jar and revealing its devastating contents?
Whatever the real motivations for such egregious inactions, it must be noted here that the way top Russian officials have handled these resonant international bribery scandals that have seriously damaged the nation’s sovereign reputation and corporate image by simply neglecting them have justifiably left the public — both domestic and foreign — wondering over the exact agenda and the end objective of the Kremlin’s recently adopted anticorruption policy, if these and similar future scandals do not and will not fall under its direct legal jurisdictions.
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