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Russia Profile

A new survey by a Russian small and midsized business interest group claims that pressure from government officials seeking bribes has risen dramatically in the last several years. While corruption in Russian businesses gained the spotlight in recent years after the Hermitage affair and the death of Firestone Duncan lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in police custody, business owners claimed that corruption is a systemic problem that is particularly targeting small business in Russia today. In the past half-decade, the number of those who say that they regularly face extralegal government pressure has nearly quadrupled.

According to the research, which is conducted yearly by the Russian Union of Manufacturers and Entrepreneurs, the number of business owners who “regularly experience pressure from state establishments” has climbed to 36 percent of all the business owners polled in the anonymous survey. Those who have faced “at least one case” of pressure for bribes from the government stood at 36 percent, while those who responded that they had never encountered government interference dropped just below 50 percent. Those numbers show a significant jump from the first survey put out by the organization in 2006, with just 19 percent saying they faced regular pressure from government and 61 percent responding that they had never been targeted by corrupt officials.