Nearly 400 Russian Officials Dismissed in 2016 Over Corruption

About 380 Russian officials were dismissed in 2016 over the loss of confidence and the same number so far in 2017, Aleksandr Rusetsky, the head of the Department of Supervision over the Compliance with the Anti-Corruption Legislation of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office told the Gazeta.ru media outlet in an interview on Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — He pointed out that over 86,000 people have been held to account over 10 years.

"More and more officials are dismissed over the loss of confidence on the initiative of prosecutors. Only last year about 380 persons were dismissed for this reason, and almost the same number in the first six months of this year," Rusetsky said.

According to Rusetsky, the number of corruption crimes revealed has increased over three times since 2007, from 106,500 ten years ago to 325,000 in 2016.

"Within the last 3.5 years over 45,000 people were convicted of corruption crimes with 4,500 of them having worked in law enforcement bodies," the official said.

More than 400 regional and municipal lawmakers are said to have been convicted of corruption.

Rusetsky added that those who have committed corruption crimes have voluntarily returned about 10 billion rubles ($167 million) during the last 2.5 years. The prosecution also took measures to collect 70 billion rubles more from those accused of corruption.