Russian Leaders Join the Global Assets Disclosure Movement

On Monday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published their assets and income declarations for 2008. The move was followed by the the Cabinet ministers on Tuesday. Among other officials, the Speaker of the Upper House of the Parliament, Sergey Mironov, published his declaration on April 1.

In a TV interview aired on March 24, Mr. Medvedev made disclosure a moral value. When disclosing, "every person will have to make the decision to honestly show his income and assets or to hide them”, he stated. Using his own example, the president intends to solve the debate on whether the declarations should be published. A debate, which has not been solved legislatively - Russian disclosure laws, including the big anti-corruption package of December 2008, are ambiguous about publication of declarations.

Looking back, the Russian media discovered that politicians’ disclosure is actually not a completely new thing in the country. What is truly new is public interest in the disclosure. It turns out that Mr. Medvedev published his declaration a year ago, while running for presidency. And even the late president, Mr. Yeltsin, used to publish his declarations back in the 90s. “During the crisis the society is much more concerned about the salaries of its leaders”, reports RBK Daily, a business daily. But Russia has gone through a financial crisis before - and disclosure was not a big issue that time around.

Disclosure should be relevant and truthful in order to meet public expectations that it will become a kind of global remedy for the current financial crisis. A recent paper by my fellow blogger Simeon Djankov on disclosure by politicians suggests that relevant disclosure requires “identification of sources of assets, gifts, and activities, rather than the reporting of values of assets and income”. To ensure declarations are truthful, good institutions able to check them and to follow up based on citizens’ complaints are necessary. Further research is now ongoing to identify which are the most relevant types of disclosure and how to make them truthful.