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Eastern Europe
August 10, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
Russian Audit Chamber to get stronger anti- corruption mandate
Vadim Dumesh in Paris
Russia's Audit Chamber, which recently got a new boss, heavyweight policymaker Alexei Kudrin, is demanding a broader mandate to fight corruption, and position itself as the know-how centre and the go-to anti-corruption institution, Kudrin said on August 3 as cited by Interfax and Vedomosti daily.
Analysts were disappointed when Kudrin accepted the job as head of the Audit Chamber, as they were hoping the former finance minister would
be given a more obviously powerful role as either special economic advisor to president Vladimir Putin or a deputy prime minister job in the gov- ernment. However, it appears now that Putin’s plan is to tighten control over the government and use the Audit Chamber as the leading institution to police the spending of a mooted RUB8 trillion of new spending to “transform” the Russian econo- my. That means giving the Audit Chamber some real teeth for the first time.
Whatever transpires from the changes, the cham- ber’s star is clearly rising. Formerly a posh but in- consequential post for former prime ministers like Sergei Stepashin, who also ran the state auditing body before disappearing into obscurity, the previ- ous head of the institution was Tatyana Golikova, who was nominated as deputy prime minister for social policy in the new government — one of the
Alexei Kudrin to get more anticorruption powers for his Audit Chamber
most important posts that will oversee a large part of the new spending under Putin’s May De- crees extravaganza. But it’s all a work in progress.
Previous reports claimed that the Audit Chamber will be given carte blanche to inspect regional spending and even to scrutinise the Central Bank of Russia, adding to the speculation that Kremlin sees the institution becoming a key watchdog un- der Kudrin, clearing the path for efficient spend- ing of Putin's RUB8 trillion development drive.
Kudrin noted that the chamber's anti-corruption mandate is almost not codified, while he will seek to legally pin the anti-corruption status to the institution that can mobilise its access to state information and accounting systems.
Curbing corruption is the most important of the four goals Kudrin set for his office, along with tying Russia's strategic development goals to the actual budget, enhancing the methods of budgetary control, and informing the public on the realisation of national strategic goals.
More recently Kudrin floated the idea that the Russian government could see a third of state officials and bureaucrats sacked by 2024 thanks to digital technology.