Chief investigator names police and municipal clerks as most ‘corruption prone’ professions

“Representatives of law-enforcement agencies, officials from municipal bodies and enterprises, people working in the spheres of education and healthcare, and also the military,” said Aleksandr Bastrykin, listing the professions most often involved in cases of corruption.

In an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the chairman of Russian federal agency that deals with high-profile crimes said that there were currently more than 7,000 people facing corruption charges. Of these, 845 worked for the Interior Ministry, 571 occupied posts in state and municipal bodies, 490 were military servicemen, 227 worked in science and education, and 221 worked in healthcare.

“Another 400 suspects are people to whom we had to apply a special mode of criminal trial. These used to work as prosecutors, judges, investigators, legal attorneys and the like. Some of them are quite senior officials, I don’t think that it makes sense to name them all, as we know their names from mass media,” Bastrykin added.

Russia was hit by several major corruption scandals in 2016. Among them was the arrest of Economy Minister Aleksey Ulyukayev on suspicion of taking a $2-million bribe from the CEO of the state-owned oil giant Rosneft. Also in 2016, investigators detained several top officials from the anti-corruption directorate of the Interior Ministry, following an incident in which they found over $122 million in cash in an apartment linked to one of the officials.