Press Release, 16 December 2025

Photo by Konstantin Kokoshkin, Kommersant

Yabloko party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov has sent a corresponding appeal to Vyacheslav Volodin, the State Duma Chairman. In his letter, Rybakov emphasised that the Yabloko party views this initiative as a direct threat to the foundations of public oversight, government accountability and the fight against corruption in the Russian Federation. The abolition of annual reporting and the transition to a system of selective departmental monitoring virtually amounts to the complete dismantling of an effective anti-corruption mechanism that has been developing in Russia since 2008.

Rybakov noted that the draft law proposes that officials should only report in cases of major transactions exceeding the family’s total income over three years, which strikes at the heart of effective anti-corruption control and government transparency. Such a model eliminates the regularity of oversight, makes the main forms of secret enrichment even more concealed, including through third parties, and facilitates grey schemes and non-material remuneration. The Poseidon system [developed for the government and originally aimed at anticorruption], meanwhile, has no public access, is built on fragmentary and opaque data, lacks external supervision and is easily susceptible to manipulation.

“Adoption of this bill will lead to the loss of the residual mechanisms of official accountability to society, the destruction of one of the few channels for identifying conflicts of interest and unjustified enrichment, as well as growing distrust on the part of citizens and society,” Rybakov declared.

It should be noted that Yabloko’s website has published an analytical report by the party’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre on the consequences of the draft law to abolish annual declarations by officials (https://www.yabloko.ru/node/46841). It states, among other things, that the Poseidon system does not provide effective anti-corruption measures and should not replace civic oversight. It fails to account for shadow and non-material forms of enrichment, and allows supervision to be circumvented through fictitious transactions and nominee owners.

To develop the declaration system an independent oversight body with participation from representatives of civil society, the academic community and the press is needed, the report’s authors – experts from Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre – emphasise.

It should be also noted that the decree “On the State Information System in the Sphere of Combating Corruption ‘Poseidon'” was signed in 2022. The system was ostensibly created to enhance the effectiveness of fighting corruption: it allows for the collection and analysis of information about officials’ income and property. The Presidential Administration coordinates Poseidon, whilst the Federal Protection Service operates it. The Central Bank, private and state-owned companies, and various funds are supposed to provide information for the programme.