MOSCOW: When Vladimir Putin dramatically fired Anatoly Serdyukov, his defence minister and one of only three officials with access to nuclear launch codes, Russia was stunned.
Never before had the Russian strongman, who is well-known for his aversion to high-profile sackings, fired government officials of such stature.
Serdyukov, Putin said, was relieved of his post due to a corruption scandal, and soon after national television broadcast a documentary exposing intricate corruption schemes at the defence ministry. “A tough, uncompromising fight against corruption has begun,” star pro-Kremlin television journalist Arkady Mamontov announced.
Since Serdyukov’s sacking earlier this month, hardly a day has gone by without Vladimir Markin, the public face of the secretive Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, going on national television to report about state funds misappropriated by bureaucrats.
Six months after Putin, 60, returned to the Kremlin for a third term amid huge protests, an anti-corruption campaign is in full swing which is expected to claim new casualties in the future.
This month the Audit Chamber said more than 15bn rubles ($486m) had been misspent between 2008 and 2012 for the preparations of an Asian summit Russia hosted outside Vladivostok in September.
Last week Russian investigators searched the elite out-of-town residence of the chief of state telecoms firm Rostelekom in a fraud case. On Tuesday, a Kremlin-controlled channel aired a new expose, this time targeting former agriculture minister Elena Skrynnik.
Complete with bird’s-eye views of what the channel said was Skrynnik’s house in France, the documentary accused the former official of stealing $1.2bn during her stint at the state-run agricultural equipment leasing firm. Yesterday, investigators said a commander and an ex-commander in the country’s strategic rocket forces were being suspected of misspending millions of rubles, with the precise damage to the state being determined.
Widespread corruption was one of the complaints that fuelled the unprecedented opposition rallies that rocked Russia in the last year, with protesters saying corruption had become a way of life under Putin’s nearly 13 years in power.
In anti-graft watchdog Transparency International’s 2011 corruption perception index, Russia ranks 143rd, 40 places from the bottom. It is behind Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Kosovo.
Intriguingly, by cracking down on corruption Putin is emulating the most prominent leader of the opposition movement Alexei Navalny who turned the fight against graft into a personal crusade.
Kremlin critic and political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said Putin wanted to win back the middle classes who were at the forefront of the protests. “An ageing autocrat does not want power—he’s got enough of it—he wants love,” Belkovsky told AFP. “And there won’t be people’s love without the fight against corruption.”
“There will be a lot of casualties in this campaign. Serdyukov was a key figure and if he was dismissed that means all bets are off.” The latest poll from the independent Levada Centre found that Putin’s approval ratings declined to 63 percent in November from 67 percent in October.
The dissatisfaction with the authorities has approached the level of the past December that saw the outbreak of the protests, said Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Centre. AFP
