I cannot say that the denunciation of the Convention will directly affect the strengthening of repressiveness – the set of immunities that existed under this Convention implied their involuntary distribution. Separate groups of investigators had their own, judges had their own, and so on. Now they can spread further, which will reduce the likelihood of persecution of perpetrators.
In addition to the Convention, there were a number of documents that were adopted along with it or in its continuation. Leaving it does not mean that changes will immediately occur, but, of course, it will somehow reconfigure the system itself. There are norms of the Convention, there is its spirit, and it is tuned to a certain proportionality of crimes and responsibility for them, international cooperation, certain types of corruption crimes, the powers of central bodies, which have been given the functions of combating corruption within the state.
This is a kind of core, the pulling out of which will entail an impact on all anti-corruption in the criminal law focus in Russia.
For example, the Investigative Committee really wanted to introduce criminal liability for corruption for legal entities, but the Prosecutor General's Office did not allow it to do so, since it is itself responsible for administrative supervision of legal entities. After the departure and denunciation of the Convention, the deputies will adopt some bill on combating corruption, the FSO can adopt something through the deputies of the State Duma, the Investigative Committee can, the Prosecutor General's Office. Yes, anyone, in fact.
If Dmitry Medvedev wants to introduce criminal liability for corrupt officials who steal funds for the war, he will be able to do this through State Duma deputies.
Russia does not have a single body that deals with the fight against corruption. There are 14 bodies that are in one way or another authorized to fight corruption. The Prosecutor General's Office was responsible for interaction with GRECO, and they, in fact, were responsible for interaction with international institutions and compliance with the requirements of international conventions by Russia. It was a rather important part of the Russian legal landscape, because every few years European judges and prosecutors came to us and analyzed how Russia was implementing the Convention.
Russia will try to create a single body outside the framework of the Council of Europe. There are already some groups that are engaged in the fight against corruption in BRICKS, in the Asia-Pacific region, but they are dysfunctional, because there are no conventional mechanisms and there is no convention that is recognized by all participants. Some of the codes and key federal laws are largely copied from European legal norms, including through conventional mechanisms that have come to us. It has nothing to do with Asia. The same criminal liability for corruption in the form of executions, as in China, is impossible in our country, because we were parties to the convention on human rights and all European protocols banning the death penalty. If we leave the Council of Europe, then we are moving towards Asia, and there are such anti-corruption tools. Not to say that they are very effective, but they are cruel.
This is what many Russian law enforcers want – the execution of corrupt officials.
Kirill Kabanov from the National Anti-Corruption Committee sleeps and sees how the executions began. And as a former FSB officer, he has many plans for how corrupt officials will be shot, hanged from all poles, and so on. In general, this was a very strong deterrent against Russia sliding into a legal abyss.
