Government corruption inquiry exposes 5,000 violations - Sergei Ivanov
MOSCOW. Dec 8 (Interfax) - The head of the Russian presidential administration, Sergei Ivanov, has said that a large-scale anti-corruption inquiry into a whole host of state agencies, corporations and companies has led to the discovery of some 5,000 violations, but these were not crimes.
"Such an inquiry was conducted and exposed about 5,000 violations. I want to point out straight away that violations do not mean crime," Ivanov told reporters on Monday.
He said he was talking about state corporations and government agencies, "from the Pension Fund to Vnesheconombank to the Fund for Utilities Reform, the Deposit Insurance Agency, (and) Rosavtodor (the Federal Road Agency)."
"I want to say objectively: there is nothing to worry about, we have not seen there any hidden massive crimes, no embezzlement on a massive scale. But - I stress - we are not being soft: both the presidential administration and the Prosecutor General's Office on working with it," he said.
"These are violations in compliance with basic regulations. For example, we found inconsistencies in regulations on how to compile and analyze statements of income and expenditures of officials who in these companies are obliged to submit declarations," Ivanov said.
Some corporations have even breached these regulations, he said.
"As a result, our prosecutor general Yury Yakovlevich Chaika came up with an initiative of systemic correction of regulatory approaches precisely towards state corporations and companies with government stakes," Ivanov said.