- Igor Krasnov, Russia’s prosecutor-general, says the country’s bribery problem is getting worse.
- He told state media that 30,000 officials were disciplined for corruption in 2024.
- Bribes are up at least 30% since 2023, with hundreds of companies fined for offering payoffs, he said.
Russia’s prosecutor-general said on Monday that detections of corruption among officials have jumped this year, with a 30% increase in bribery cases compared to 2023.
Igor Krasnov told state media that almost 30,000 Russian officials were caught and disciplined for breaking anti-graft rules in 2024.
Of that total, 500 were fired for “loss of trust,” Krasnov said.
Krasnov said that at least half of all corruption cases involved bribery and that almost 19,000 such crimes were discovered in the first nine months of 2024.
That’s nearly as many as the 20,300 bribery cases his office found in 2023, Krasnov added.
“This year, the number of such crimes has increased by more than 30%, exceeding 6,600 cases,” he said.
According to Krasnov, about 760 billion rubles worth of funds and property have been confiscated in the last five years from officials accused of corruption. That’s worth about $7.6 billion today.
About 200 companies were fined in the first half of 2024 for trying to bribe officials, the prosecutor-general also said.
Analysts from the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said systemic corruption in Russia is likely to exacerbate its economic burdens from fighting the Ukraine war.
“Russia’s mounting economic pressures stemming from the war, paired with widespread corruption, labor shortages, and inefficiencies in Russia’s DIB, will likely compound the cost of Russia’s war and further undermine its ability to effectively sustain DIB operations while maintaining economic stability,” wrote the ISW.
DIB refers to the defense industrial base, a network of companies and manufacturers that provides governments with weapons and military equipment.
The ruble has already weakened considerably since the war began and now trades at about 100 against the US dollar, compared to about 75 against the dollar before March 2022. With international sanctions hemming Russia in, the country’s leader, Vladimir Putin, has pushed its economy and government spending heavily toward defense manufacturing, recruitment, and payments to families of troops.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin estimated on Saturday that Russia has “squandered” over $200 billion on invading Ukraine.
“Russia has paid a staggering price for Putin’s folly,” Austin said at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
He also said the war has killed or wounded at least 700,000 Russian troops.
Russia’s defense ministry has historically struggled with corruption. While the extent of graft within the organization is difficult to determine, it emerges to the fore sometimes when top officials are ousted.
In June, for example, five senior figures in the Russian military, including a former deputy defense minister, were arrested on corruption charges.
The charges came just after Sergei Shoigu, the country’s longtime defense minister, was replaced.
Some analysts, such as Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider at the time that they believed the arrests could be connected to Shoigu’s replacement.
