The lower house of parliament will check its members for discrepancies in income declarations, a lawmaker said on Friday.
The State Duma is creating a commission that will look into declarations of lawmakers and their families, which they are required by law to make public, said Irina Yarovaya, head of the Duma’s security and anti-corruption committee and a member of the ruling United Russia.
Yarovaya did not elaborate. An emailed request for comment sent to her committee went unanswered on Friday.
Transparency International Russia, an anti-corruption watchdog, said last fall that 183 out of 266 lawmakers who run for re-election in the Duma vote in December had discrepancies between their income declarations for 2010 published on the parliament’s site and those filed with election authorities last year.
Most lawmakers on the list said the figures did not match due to “technical errors,” Vedomosti business newspaper reported on Friday.
The Duma needs to look into “offshore [accounts], trust [funds] and other accounts of its lawmakers and the conflicts of interests generated by them basing their assets abroad,” Oksana Dmitriyeva, a Duma deputy with the opposition A Just Russia party, said in the lower chamber on Friday.
She was fighting back accusations that some lawmakers had contacts with British and American diplomats, possibly causing a conflict of interests and compromising their independent stance. A group of rights activists and lawmakers, including Dmitriyeva, met with newly appointed U.S. envoy to Russia, Michael McFaul, in Moscow earlier this month.
Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin attended the Duma session Friday to tell the lower chamber that his agency was ready to look into lawmakers’ meeting with McFaul if formally requested. No request was reported as of Friday afternoon.
“We understand Dmitriyeva is in need of excuses, but this is just unconvincing,” Yarovaya sniped back at the opposition lawmaker at Friday’s plenary session.
The Duma needs to target complex assets that are not registered as personal property and therefore not included on income declarations, Dmitriyeva told RIA Novosti by telephone Friday.
The commission announced by Yarovaya would not be able to investigate assets in offshore and trust funds, she added.
About 100 of 450 lawmakers are likely to have “complex” assets abroad, Dmitriyeva said, adding that was only a personal estimate. “The law does not require them to disclose such assets, but it would be an ethical thing to report possible conflicts of interest,” she said.
