Officials at all levels will find it harder to hide their corruption-fed treasures as the government is set to push through the parliament a new law in a bid to root out the centuries-old problem.

The bill that the State Duma is expected to pass in three weeks' time would introduce tough control over officials' expenditures and make sure they match their income, a key provision missing in the current legislation.

The government hopes it will help to move Russia higher from its 143rd place out of 182 countries in Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Who’s on the radar

·      The president, the prime minister, cabinet ministers, State Duma deputies and Federation Council senators, top judges of the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and Supreme Court of Arbitration, federal courts, the Prosecutor General, governors, senior managers and auditors of the Audits Chamber, the head, its deputy and secretary, and permanent members of the Russian Central Election Commission,

·         members of the board of directors of the central bank and other senior employees,

·         federal, regional and municipal officials,

·         CEOs of state corporations,

·         heads of the Russian pension fund and other social state funds,

·         CEOs of state-controlled companies.

Crime and punishment

If the bill is signed into law, officials at every level of government will be obliged to list all their latest acquisitions, including cars, real estate, securities, plots of land, if their price is higher than their cumulative income over the past three years. The same rule also applies to purchases made by their spouses and property registered for their underage children.

In the applications they would be required to submit, officials will have to reveal where they got the money for their new Mercedes, for example.

If they cannot come up with a plausible explanation, they might be fired and their property placed into state coffers on a court’s decision.

No day without a case

The latest corruption scandal lost Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov his job, after the Russian Investigative Committee announced it launched a probe into Oboronservice, a company controlled by the Defence Ministry, on suspicion that it had sold off state assets to insider firms, with a budget loss of $100 million.

More angles on corruption in the videos below.