RCCI offers blueprint for using bailout funds and fighting corruption in the country
At a high profile meeting in the Kremlin, top officials of the powerfully influential Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI), briefed the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, on the RCCI’s programs to augment the official efforts to fight corruption, a widespread social evil that has penetrated every facet of the Russian society, making life difficulties for all, especially for the representatives of the entrepreneurial class. One of the ways to fight corruption, according to RCCI Chairman Yevgeny Primakov, is to finish the administrative reform, one of the end goals of which was to transfer the excessive state control in certain sectors of the economy over to self-regulating organizations.
The effects of the stalled reform and other unsolved issues in the system of state governance have led to an unprecedented boost in corruption, which now pervades the whole economy, spreading its tentacles over all spheres of public and private lives. Some experts even believe corruption is one of the reasons, why the several billions of rubles doled out by the state to support the economy through the provision of liquidity to banks, have yet to reach their destinations – financially starved companies teetering on closure of production and/or bankruptcy.
To solve this problem, Primakov asked the government to punish banks that have created artificial “thrombosis” in the nation’s financial system. “The government can only solve this problem by coming down heavily on banks that have received the state bailout funds, but have yet to pass the resources to their addressees. Some say that banks are private commercial institutions, and, therefore, the state cannot violate free-market rules and principles. But this is not the case, because private commercial banks, which have received the government’s special funds have seized to be pure private entities,” he added. “As pseudo-government agents, such banks are now under obligation to do all that is required of them by the state.” The president agreed with all the RCCI’s proposals. Speaking about the corruption and its negative impacts, he noted that the government plans to adopt all the measures needed to rein in this social evil, one of the most dangerous signs of state disintegration. “But we have to approach this issue with special care, and therefore, the execution of all our proposals will need to be corrected depending on their effectiveness.”
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