Photo: RF IC St. Petersburg
Petersburg summarized the results of identified corruption episodes for 2022. The prosecutor’s office uncovered and arrested 917 violations, and more than 400 officials were held accountable. In recent years, there has been a steady increase in corruption in St. Petersburg, which coincided with the period of the governorship of Alexander Beglov.
According to the Academy of Sciences “Operational Cover”, in 2022, 917 offenses against corruption of officials and organizations were detected and punished in St. Petersburg. The audit was carried out by employees of the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office as part of the supervision of the implementation of anti-corruption legislation. Over 430 submissions were made and approximately 420 officials were held accountable. The total amount of lawsuits for corruption amounts to more than 403 million rubles.
The main offenses are bribery, and the areas of expenditure of budgetary funds and public procurement, public administration and control are designated as the most susceptible to corruption.
This is not the first time that the alarming corruption situation in St. Petersburg has been noted. Thus, under the control of the current mayor, the city entered the top 10 of the most corrupt regions in Russia. In 2019, 73 criminal cases were opened under the bribery article, a year later – 109 cases, in 2021 their number reached 181.
It should be noted that a quarter of these processes were associated with Smolny officials. For example, in February last year, Valery Meshcheryakov, head of procurement in the Krasnoselsky district administration, was arrested. He was suspected of accepting a 1 million ruble bribe for course cleaning contracts.
In the fall of 2022, according to media reports, KGIOP Chairman Sergey Makarov was arrested. He was accused of overstepping official authority, which had serious consequences in the case of the demolition of cultural heritage sites. Investigators suspected his department of deliberately misrepresenting the construction dates of the facilities in order to evade protective legislation with further demolitions. The head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, drew attention to the problem and took personal control of all high-profile cases related to attempts to demolish the OKN of St. Petersburg.
In September last year, the head of the Vasileostrovsky district health department, Nikita Tikhonov, was arrested. The reason for this was information about the “disappearance” of about 80 million rubles allocated from the city budget for cleaning clinics.
Corruption for St. Petersburg is a systemic phenomenon which, coincidentally, with the arrival of Governor Beglov in his post, took on impressive proportions.
Media have reported that more than half of St. Petersburg residents are outraged by the unprecedented level of corruption in the city.
