A smear campaign is picking up steam in the Russian State Duma, where lawmakers from the opposition and the “party of power” are accusing each other of illegally running businesses on the side.
The latest volley was fired on Monday by opposition deputy Dmitry Gudkov, who attacked five of his peers in the lower house of the parliament, all hailing from the ruling United Russia.
Lawmakers on the list either run various companies in violation of federal legislation or own assets far exceeding what they could have afforded on a deputy’s salary, Gudkov said in an online expose.
Vehicles such as Bentley, Porsche and Lexus and sprawling real estate in Russia and abroad, including in Germany, were cited in the report, which was based on lawmakers’ tax income declarations and information from the publicly available database of Russian companies run by the Federal Tax Service.
Four out of five United Russia lawmakers targeted by Gudkov could not be reached for comment as of Monday afternoon. A spokeswoman for the fifth, Pavel Zavalny, said he would not comment on a blog post.
The scandal kicked off in June, when the Investigative Committee opened a check against Gudkov’s father Gennady, also a Duma deputy with A Just Russia, who was accused of running businesses in Russia and Bulgaria during his tenure in the Duma.
The ruling party is preparing to strip Gudkov Sr. of parliamentary immunity, Andrei Isayev, a senior party functionary included in Gudkov’s expose, said earlier this month.
“A lawmaker’s immunity is not to dodge criminal responsibility, it’s only intended to protect a lawmaker’s political activity,” Isayev said, party website Er.ru reported.
The Gudkovs said the case was fabricated in retribution for their prominent role in the mass anti-Kremlin rallies that started in Moscow in December. After months of hesitation, the authorities launched a crackdown on protesters, detaining more than a dozen over a riots at a rally in May, tightening political legislation, and searching homes of several opposition leaders, though not the Gudkovs.
Dmitry Gudkov was unavailable for comment on Monday, but his close ally, A Just Russia lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, said the opposition expected the investigators to either pursue the “mirror cases” against United Russia lawmakers or leave Gudkov Sr. alone.
But the practice of combining legislative jobs with entrepreneurship is ubiquitous among all parliamentary factions, ruling and opposition alike, said Kirill Kabanov of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, a watchdog.
“Everybody’s doing it – senators, lawmakers, everyone,” Kabanov said.
He agreed the Gudkov case was politically motivated, saying this was why the ongoing smear campaign was unlikely to trigger any broad crackdowns on lawmakers facing conflict of interest.
Purging the parliament of businessmen-cum-lawmakers is impossible without giving law enforcement more power for investigating lawmakers, complete with wiretapping, Kabanov said.
But lawmakers have rejected all efforts to the point for years, he said. Ponomaryov confirmed no new legislation is on the cards even with the oppositional A Just Russia.
