Medvedev urges to drastically toughen anticorruption measures

"The words that corruption is stifling Russia's development are heard constantly," he noted, when speaking at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. "The answer is obvious and should be, as they said, symmetric - the stranglehold on the neck of corrupts must always and inevitably be tightened. The entire Russian society has solidarity in this."

"It is very difficult to detect corruption violations," the president noted. "The current procedure for prosecuting corrupt officials is very complicated and slow. But it should be retained in order to have clear guarantees in case of ungrounded accusations, as there are a lot of such."

"At the same time, state authorities must be cleared of corrupt officials faster and more decisively," he said. "For this, there should be broader grounds for dismissal of corruption-suspected persons from civil service. In particular, the grounds for dismissal may be information obtained as a result of operational investigation activities, even if it is not formalized so that it cannot be grounds for criminal prosecution. It is, in fact, loss of confidence as a reason for termination of service relationship. Here, of course, it is necessary to retain the judicial procedure to appeal against such dismissals."

The president also proposed to consider the possibility "of introducing full material liability of state officials to the Treasury, which has compensated for an individual's losses caused by unlawful actions or inaction of such officials."

"We should press out those who spit at the law, order and their conscientious and honest colleagues," Medvedev stressed. "And there are many of them, and, unfortunately, in the law enforcement system itself. I am speaking, in particular, about investigators, who turn unfounded initiation and investigation of criminal cases into a raid tool and profitable business for themselves."

The president pledged that the institution of a prosecutor's mandatory checking will be used over initiated and dropped criminal cases not turned over to courts.

When signs of abuse are detected, the prosecutor will bring the investigator to justice, up to criminal prosecution, the president said, adding that he would submit appropriate law amendments to the parliament in the near future.