page_title: Dmitry Medvedev
section_title: Anti-corruption campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Dmitry Medvedev / Presidency (2008–12) / Domestic policy / Anti-corruption campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW. Meeting of the Anti-Corruption Council. Русский: МОСКВА, КРЕМЛЬ. Заседание Совета по противодействию коррупции.
context_page_description: Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is a Russian politician who is serving as Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, headed by Vladimir Putin. He served as prime minister of Russia between 2012 and 2020. From 2008 to 2012, Medvedev served as president of Russia. Medvedev resigned along with the rest of the government on 15 January 2020 to allow President Putin to make sweeping constitutional changes; he was succeeded by Mikhail Mishustin on 16 January 2020. On the same day, Vladimir Putin appointed him deputy chairman of the Security Council.
  Regarded as more liberal than his predecessor and successor as president, Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's top agenda as president was a wide-ranging modernisation programme, aiming at modernising Russia's economy and society, and lessening the country's reliance on oil and gas. During Medvedev's tenure, the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty was signed by Russia and the United States, Russia emerged victorious in the Russo-Georgian War, and recovered from the Great Recession. Medvedev initiated a substantial law enforcement reform and launched an anti-corruption campaign, despite having been accused of corruption himself.
context_section_description: On 19 May 2008, Medvedev signed a decree on anti-corruption measures, which included creation of an Anti-Corruption Council. In the first meeting of the Council on 30 September 2008, Medvedev said:
  I will repeat one simple, but very painful thing. Corruption in our country has become rampant. It has become commonplace and characterises the life of the Russian society.
  In July 2008, Medvedev's National Anti-Corruption Plan was published in the official Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper. It suggested measures aimed at making sanctions for corruption more severe, such as legislation to disqualify state and municipal officials who commit minor corruption offences and making it obligatory for officials to report corruption. The plan ordered the government to prepare anti-corruption legislation based on these suggestions. The bill that followed, called On Corruption Counteraction was signed into law on 25 December 2008 as Federal Law N 273-FZ. According to Professor Richard Sakwa, "Russia now at last had serious, if flawed, legislation against corruption, which in the context was quite an achievement, although preliminary results were meagre." Russia's score in Corruption Perceptions Index rose from 2.1 in 2008 to 2.2 in 2009, which "could be interpreted as a mildly positive response to the newly adopted package of anti-corruption legislation initiated and promoted by president Medvedev and passed by the Duma in December 2008", according to Transparency International's CPI 2009 Regional Highlights report.
  On 13 April 2010, Medvedev signed presidential decree No. 460 which introduced the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, a midterm government policy, while the plan is updated every two years. The new strategy stipulated increased fines, greater public oversight of government budgets and sociological research. According to Georgy Satarov, president of the Indem think tank, the latest decree "probably reflected Medvedev's frustration with the fact that the 2008 plan had yielded little result."
  In January 2011, President Medvedev admitted that the government had so far failed in its anti-corruption measures.
  On 4 May 2011, Medvedev signed the Federal Law On Amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation to Improve State Anti-Corruption Management. The bill raised fines for corruption to up to 100 times the amount of the bribe given or received, with the maximum fine being 500 million rubles ($18.3 million).
caption: Medvedev chairing a meeting the Anti-Corruption Council on 30 September 2008
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