© Nikolay Gyngazov / Global Look Press
'nip and tuck'
The Lower House Security Committee of the Russian parliament has approved a new draft law which allows to firing of federal lawmakers who lie in their income declarations and spend more than they officially earn.
The bill, written by MP Anatoly Vybornyi of the majority party United Russia, orders that
Russian senators and state Duma deputies who knowingly include false information in their annual income declarations are automatically ousted from parliament. If the mistake is unintentional then the lawmaker responsible can get off with a warning.
In comments to the
Izvestia daily newspaper the author of the bill said that
the document equates the rights and responsibilities of parliament members to those of other civil servants. At present, civil servants who give false information on their income declaration are punished with automatic sacking, while senators and state Duma deputies face only the obligatory disclosure of this information in the mass media and on the parliament's website.
If passed the bill would make it
obligatory for parliamentarians to report all deals made within a year when the size of such deals exceeds the combined income of all their family members for the previous three years. The reports must include the detailed list of sources for the purchase.
In addition, the bill orders
automatic expulsion of members of parliament who allowed a conflict of interests to occur and whose actions hurt the interests of citizens, state organizations or the state as a whole.
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