RUSSIA Moscow withdraws from the international convention against corruption

He had signed it in 1999. Corruption becomes a “social norm”, behavior that cannot be punished. Protests against the corruption of Alexei Navalny began about 10 years ago. Putin completes the campaign in defense of his supporters. It is a genetic mutation of the Penal Code with new forms of “immunity” for the powerful.

Moscow (Asia) – President Putin has proposed to the Duma the approval of a new bill on the “denonsatsija” (renunciation-renunciation) of international agreements derived from the Convention on criminal liability for corruption. It is the first of the 48 countries that signed it in 1999 to withdraw, accentuating Russia’s international isolation, but above all accepting corruption as a “social norm”, a behavior that cannot be sanctioned.

Putin’s war that is raging in Ukraine today began 10 years ago, within his own country, against youth protests encouraged by Aleksej Navalny’s anti-corruption fund, which today languishes in the Melekhovo concentration camp in increasingly unhealthy conditions. more precarious The corrupt system of oligarchs and criminal gangs is the true reaction to “Western depravity”, which forced to submit to very rigid rules to be admitted to international markets.

In fact, the new law specifies that the reason for the rejection of the convention lies in Russia’s marginalization of “GRECO”, the Group of States Against Corruption, which was decided by the Council of Europe on March 23 last year, a month after of the invasion of Ukraine. The members of the group are the countries that signed the 1999 agreements, but the aggression has deprived Russia of the right to assess the activities of other countries.

Putin’s new law denounces this “discrimination” against Russia, which leads to “false accusations” against its officials and businessmen. This also puts an end to all investigations into the misdeeds of the ruling caste in Russia, after having stifled and persecuted all the media outlets that denounced them with laws against “foreign agents” and the closure of associations active in the social realm.

The campaigns against “Putin’s palaces”, Medvedev’s shoes and villas, and the luxury of so many powerful people have resulted in the internal and external “revenge” of the regime. The last scandal was the denunciation, a few days ago, of the secret funds belonging to the family of the governor of Saint Petersburg, Aleksandr Beglov, and, in recent weeks, of the hidden properties for several million belonging to the commander of the Russian troops in Ukraine, General Sergej Surovikin.

Precisely on New Year’s Eve Putin had delivered a “gift” to his most loyal subjects by exempting state officials from the obligation to file income statements “during the course of the special military operation.” As the current leader of the Navalny Fund in exile, Ivan Zhdanov, wrote on Twitter, “the next step will be the inclusion of corruption as a constitutional norm.”

According to the navalists, the current generation in power is aging more and more depressingly and “they have no other methods to stay in power, democratic mechanisms do not serve them,” comments Ždanov. The objective of the Anti-Corruption Convention is to unify criminal sanctions against this social scourge, allowing member countries to help each other in the search for means to combat it across borders. But today “all these mechanisms have been thrown overboard,” observes Ilja Šumanov, director of Transparency International-Russia, and assures that “we can forget about any exchange of information.”

GRECO will no longer have the means to control Russia’s observance of even the slightest standards of fairness in financial transactions and business schemes, yet another sign of Russia’s “lack of submission to international standards” at all levels. The denonsatsija enters into force three months after the announcement, and starting in the spring the concrete consequences of Putin’s decision will begin to be seen, which will deprive Russian citizens of any defense instrument against the prevailing corruption. It is a “genetic mutation of the Criminal Code,” says Šumanov, with new forms of “immunity” for the privileged and powerful.