Russia’s officials are chief corporate raiders, says the national anti-corruption committee

In most cases those behind corporate raids in Russia are the country’s officials and not other companies, Kirill Kabanov, head of the anti-corruption committee told journalists on Thursday.

“Officials benefit privately from all companies. It depends on the scale of the business. The bigger the business, the higher the rank of the official involved,” said Kabanov. This not only makes it difficult to study the problem, he continued. It is also hard to investigate it since it involves corrupt influence.

“An analysis of the typical ways in which such takeovers are implemented shows that State bodies play an extremely important role.” That is the conclusion reached by the authors of Proposals for improving the effective struggle with corporate raiding. The report was presented at a press conference on 4 September and the anti-corruption committee was among the organisations that helped to prepare it.

(RIA Novosti, 11 September 2008)