Russian President Vladimir Putin presented to the State Duma, the lower house of the Moscow parliament, a draft law regarding the country’s withdrawal from the Criminal Convention on Corruption of the Council of Europe and withdrawal from the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), EFE reports, Agerpres reads.

The respective document, which aims at Russia’s exit from the convention signed in January 1999, was included among the projects of the lower chamber of the Russian legislature. In the appendices to the bill, Putin argued his proposal citing the decision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE) to withdraw Russia’s membership of GRECO, which monitors the fulfillment of the agreement.

„According to this decision, Russia loses the status of a member state of GRECO, except for the cases in which GRECO monitors the fulfillment of commitments made by our country, but Russia loses the right to participate in the debate or approval of reports, as well as the right to vote”, Putin pointed out.

The draft law mentions that this is an inadmissible situation for Russia, which is why it is proposed to withdraw the country from the Criminal Convention on Corruption and withdraw from GRECO. Moscow announced that it is withdrawing from the Council of Europe in March 2022, after 26 years of participation, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and after the Committee of Ministers of the CoE triggered Article 8 of its statute to exclude Russia, recalls EFE.

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index published by the non-governmental organization Transparency International, Russia ranks 136 out of 180, with 29 points on a scale from 0 (totally corrupt) to 100 (totally uncorrupt).

Agerpres