Long Road to Zero Tolerance Of Corruption
In an opinion editorial, Brook Horowitz, executive director of International Business Leaders Forum in Russia, comments that although President Dmitry Medvedev's anti-corruption campaign is two years old, there has been little progress to date.
Horowitz cites a recently published PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Economic Crime survey showing that 71% of Russian companies were victims of economic crime in the last 12 months alone - a dramatic increase since the last survey of 2007 and well above the global average.
He notes that attitudes are likely to be slow to change within the Russian government, and calls on companies to work together to steer the country away from corruption. He believes that it is "business, usually the counterparty of fraud and corruption that has a vested interest in reducing and eliminating what amounts to an unpredictable tax". He concludes that by working collectively, companies can create an environment that is less tolerant to corruption.