"Inflation Has Skyrocketed: Proposal to Reconsider the Size of Small Bribes and Allowable Gift Values in Russia"

13:34; 10 December 2025 year

Alexander Razuvayev, a member of the supervisory board of the Association of Financial Analysts and Risk Managers, has proposed changes to the anti-corruption legislation. His remarks were reported by the magazine "Abzats" on International Anti-Corruption Day. Razuvayev suggested increasing the minimum sum for which a bribe is considered a criminal offense from 10,000 to 50,000 rubles, citing inflation as the reason for the proposed change. In explaining his position, Razuvayev said: «Inflation has grown significantly. Everything is changing. And of course, this needs to be done. We can make it 50,000 rubles». He also proposed raising the limit for gifts to government officials from the current 3,000 to 30,000 rubles. Parliamentarians considered the idea impractical and dangerous, and the proposal did not receive support from deputies and experts in the field of anti-corruption. First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Building, Yuri Sinelshchikov, noted that there are no criminal cases involving bribes of less than 10,000 rubles in Russia, as officials typically take larger bribes. Experts expressed concerns about the proposal. Vitaly Borodin, the leader of the Federal Project for Security and Anti-Corruption, warned that raising the threshold could lead to an increase in corruption: «If we raise the threshold to 50,000 rubles, people will take bribes up to 49,000 rubles and there will be no punishment for it». Currently, for minor bribery (Article 291.2, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the punishment is a fine up to 200,000 rubles, corrective labor, restriction, or deprivation of liberty for up to one year. In the first nine months of 2025, according to the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastykin, more than 24,000 criminal cases were initiated for corruption. Most of these cases have already been sent to court. Critics of the proposal argue that raising the threshold would not only be unnecessary but potentially harmful to anti-corruption policies.

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