Russia, 12 Apr 2007 – The main military prosecutor's office will work out a program for combating bribe-takers in the army

The consultation was dedicated only to one topic, namely, corruption. Interestingly, this consultation coincided with financial checks started in the Defense Ministry by the new Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov.

Fridinsky drew a disheartening conclusion for the military. There was no radical change in the combating of theft in the army. The scale of theft is counted in hundreds of millions of rubles and not only military commissars and directors of warehouses are taken to prison for mercenary crimes. Along with this, the Main Military Prosecutor says that the quantity of corruption crimes in the army does not decrease. Chiefly, these are: embezzlement of money allocated for the defense order, the misuse of power, and theft of state property. It is necessary to say that Fridinsky's predecessor on the post of the Chief Military Prosecutor has paid much attention to the problem of corruption in the army, too. Alas, he failed to solve-or reduce-this problem.

According to specialists of the Auditing Chamber, the areas where cash circulates remain the most corruption-hazardous in the army. These are the purchase of armament, food and other material valuables for needs of the military, the payment of money allowances, social benefits and the issue of housing certificates. A well-established system of so-called kickbacks often works in these areas.

According to Fridinsky, one of the reasons why the theft of state property is so persistent among the military is that the army does not have systematic respose to the prevention of theft. It is planned to create such an anticorruption program in the army with the assistance of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office in the near future. This decision was made according to results of the consultation.