CSTO PA Combating Corruption Experience Discussed at the 15th Eurasian Forum

On April 28, the 15th Eurasian Anti-Corruption Forum was held in Moscow at the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation.

Sergei Pospelov, Executive Secretary of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly, addressed the forum. In his speech, he emphasized that corruption and the legalization of criminal proceeds pose a serious challenge to state institutions and sovereignty, and fuel organized crime and terrorism. According to Sergei Pospelov, detecting this type of crimes is currently very difficult due to complex transnational schemes and the use of modern IT technologies.

Sergei Pospelov stressed that legal measures play an important role in overcoming these challenges, emphasizing that the CSTO PA’s work in this area is based on more than 20 specialized model acts.

He pointed out that anti-corruption documents have been regularly included in the CSTO PA Action Plan on Approximation and Harmonization of National Legislation of the CSTO Member States, adopted every five years by the Assembly.

"Combating these threats through legal means is one of the key tasks of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization," the Executive Secretary of the CSTO PA underlined. 

As you may recall, from 2013 to 2019, the CSTO PA adopted a wide range of anti-corruption and related legal acts. These include Recommendations on Countering Bribery of Foreign Officials, as well as a 2015 package of documents on harmonizing legislation in combating organized crime, corruption and corporate raiding. In the following years, the legal framework was expanded to include a model law against the illegal seizure of legal entities and an anti-corruption glossary, as well as a set of 2017 acts: recommendations on assessing the corruption risk of civil service positions, ensuring national security, business and beneficiary transparency, and providing legal assistance in criminal cases, along with the model Agreement on the Criminal Prosecution of Foreigners Within the CSTO Forces. Finally, in 2019, Recommendations on the confiscation of property (outside the scope of criminal punishment) for combating corruption and the financing of terrorism were approved.