Withdrawal from CoE anti-corruption convention won't affect consistent efforts against corruption in Russia - Peskov

MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) - Russia's decision to withdraw from the Council of Europe's Criminal Law Convention on Corruption will not affect international cooperation and will not imply the slackening of efforts against corruption inside Russia, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.

"This doesn't undermine our legislative capability, our domestic legislative capability in combating corruption," Peskov told journalists on Monday, in commenting on legislation on terminating Russia's participation in the convention submitted by President Vladimir Putin to the State Duma for endorsement.

"Russia has working systems to strongly oppose corruption. We can't say we've been able to eradicate it completely. Nobody in the world has been able to eradicate this problem, but this is not just a campaign-style effort but consistent activity, and this work will continue," Peskov said.

"As for international collaboration, we're continuing it with countries that are friendly to us now, and there's no negative influence here. As for our previous collaboration with unfriendly countries, there's been none for quite a long time, and none of it is expected for now," he said.

"You know that this is related to the general policy of our withdrawal from the Council of Europe and so on," He said.

At the same time, Peskov admitted that "there might be certain problems as concerns the extradition of suspects and the accused."