Financial Transparency Coalition

Since the 1999 Duma election, which was widely considered free and fair, Russia has descended from a “Partly Free” society, according to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Rankings, to “Not Free” this year. In the last six years, Russia has passed a law giving bureaucrats discretion to shut down NGOs; an assassin murdered Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist who was critical of the Kremlin, in cold blood; and the government heavily manipulated the parliamentary elections to give a majority to pro-government parties. Corruption has been an endemic part of Russia’s public and private sectors for decades. Global Financial Integrity...