The number of corruption-related crimes in Russia has grown by almost one-third during the first six months of 2012, year-on-year, Investigative Committee (IC) spokesman Vladimir Markin said on Thursday.
“During the first half of 2012 IC investigators handled 15,800 cases on corruption-related crimes, which is more than 5,000 than in the same period last year (10,400),” he said, citing Committee head Alexander Bastrykin.
Markin attributed this rise to a higher crime clearance rate, noting that the proportion of unsolved corruption crimes was significantly lower than that in other kinds of crime.
Corruption remains one of Russia’s most pressing problems. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranks the country 143rd (out of 182) in its 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made the fight against corruption a key feature of his four-year term as president, but admitted in January that he achieved “almost no success.”
