St. Petersburg Chinovniki Debate Courchavel Vacations

Nothing is duller – and more dangerous – than pointing out sleaze in the Russian government. Militia officers stop drivers on Russian roads with no other pretense than to collect bribes. Parents bribe the administrators of Russian schools and universities to ensure admission for their children. Doctors and hospital workers take money for elementary health care. Plumbers take bribes to repair sinks, faucets, military officers shake down cadets for part of their salaries, and highly placed businessmen expect percentage kickbacks for commercial deals. Mentioning corruption in general terms gets you a yawn in Russia; actually revealing them about the wrong people, though, gets you a bullet in the head, like Anna Politkovskaya or Paul Khlebnikov.

Russian institutions are so awash in corruption that nobody even seems to get worked up about it; western companies operating there just find good middlemen to pay off the right people. Corruption becomes another line item, a just a Cost of Doing Business. Transparency International estimates that the average cost of additional fees exceeds two thousand dollars per shipping container for every import and export shipment arriving and departing Russia. These additional fees, paid to customs brokers, often go directly into the pockets of dishonest officers in the Federal Customs Service. Corporations would be outraged over such a thing in Rotterdam or Newark (well, maybe less so in Newark). However, foreign shipping companies, in a dog-eat-dog struggle for market share, just shrug, pass along the costs and keep the deniability plausible.

In the good times, corruption may not matter so much – over the past ten years, Russia experienced an average double-digit annual growth, thanks to high energy prices and the relative fiscal discipline of the Putin administration. The rising tide lifted many boats. A nascent middle-class formed, and average citizens could afford many previously unattainable luxuries; automobiles, trips abroad, imported clothes and shoes. The stuff that makes life not merely bearable but enjoyable. Investment in infrastructure increased and, even with endemic theft, many Russian cities became noticeably better places to live.

Now, however, energy prices and demand have sunk, capital is less available and the bottom of the consumer goods market has fallen out. Fontanka.ru, the major St. Petersburg newspaper, daily reports on closing grocery stores and auto dealerships. Governor Valentina Matvienko’s plan to convert the Venice of the North into the Russian Detroit fell afoul of the world economic crisis.

The good times for Russia are over, at least for the near future, and as might be expected, this sets people to wondering exactly where their money went during the good times. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev set the elimination of corruption high on his agenda when he came into office. And, surprisingly, he appears to be doing something about it.

A February decree requires presidential staff to report the destination and duration of all trips overseas, excluding those for official business. At year’s end, the presidential administration will publish the name of each staff member, along with the trip details.

Medvedev hopes to achieve two things with this decree. First, staff members will have to explain just how they can afford to vacation three times a year on the Cote d’Azur, when their official salary might be enough for a couple of weeks at the dacha. Accounting for their expenses, the logic goes, will make Russia’s highly placed civil servants – chinovniki – account for their income. Second, Medvedev hopes to defuse social tensions among regular citizens, who may resent the chinovniki living high off the hog while they are forced to tighten their belts.

According to Fontanka.ru, now the city of St. Petersburg is considering a similar measure, requiring its chinovniki to account for their overseas vacations. While we may never get a glimpse of the inner workings of the Kremlin, thanks to Fontanka.ru, we can read about the debate this type of ruling creates in the lower ranks of the Russian bureaucracy.

The debate between city administrators apparently is quite heated – while promoters of the bill defend its merits, opponents resent the invasion of their privacy. For example, Zoya Zaushnikova, deputy for the Fair Russia faction, voted against the measure, angrily stating,
“Why should I have to justify myself to [St. Petersburg Duma House Speaker] Tyulpanov if I go to Egypt or Turkey on vacation? I don’t want him to know where I vacation, it’s my personal business!”

St. Petersburg Legal Committee Commissioner Viktor Evtukhov, initiator of the legislation, calmed Zaushnikova, saying,
“If you want to go to Egypt, or Turkey, or Courchavel [a French skiing resort popular among the Russian elite] or Miami, that’s your right, not your obligation. We want the affairs of our chinovniki to be open and our voters to know what we spend money on. Nobody really wants to go to Courchavel…”

Then he continued, coyly ignoring the fact that he was speaking with in the presence of the press,
“I won’t tell anybody how you voted. Unlike the leader of your faction, who passes everything along to the mass media, I will prohibit my political apparatus from informing anybody that you voted against the measure. Nobody will ever know about it, Zoya Valentinova…”

According to the article, there are hints that Russia’s chinovniki have an unspoken agreement among themselves not to visit elite European resorts until the disclosure fever subsides. Russian media recently published photographs from Courchavel of important chinovniki and influential figures such as Leonid Tyagechev, Vladimir Kozhin, Evgeni Murov, Krasnodarsk senator Igor Kamenskoi, Russian NATO representative Dmitri Rogozin and Tver governor Dmitri Zelenin. Moscow region financial director Alexei Kuznetsov, under investigation for expropriating $20 billion worth of land in the prestigious Podmoskovye region, was seen vacationing with them as well.

Other important Russian chinovniki are quite open about where they enjoy to spend their vacations. For example, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko prefers Greece, where she was an ambassador during the 1990s. Viktor Evtukhov, author of the legislation, enjoys Greece too, especially the island of Tasos.

http://www.fontanka.ru/2009/04/03/072/