State Duma accepted on first reading was a bill that eased the need for officials to submit annual income declarations.
According to the document, mandatory declaration will only be valid when going into operation, transferring from one government agency to another and a number of other cases. The bill was introduced by a group of deputies led by Chairman of the Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Vasily Piskarev.
He explained the changes by digitalization: today data on the financial situation of an official can be analyzed by the state system Poseidon. It interacts with the databases of the Federal Tax Service, Rosfinmonitoring, Rosreestr, State Traffic Safety Inspectorate and other departments. The bill caused controversy at the plenary session of the Duma.
Spravoross Andrei Kuznetsov asked who would check the Poseidon system itself, and communist Alexei Kurinny recalled that the system did not reveal the corruption of former judge Momotov. Their questions were answered by Dmitry Vyatkin and Vasily Piskarev, who presented the material:
— If we entrust this problem to an electronic data collation system, who will check the system itself, and where can we ensure that this system will not be selective? Some violators will be detected, some violators will not be detected. Where things are done openly and are done with certainty, the insurance for that time is public attention to the provision of accounts. How to ensure the system does not abuse its monopoly position?
– This is a state information system, it is not some kind of program that operates on its own – it is a GIS. All the GIS systems, we have several dozen of them, operate strictly in a regulated and legislative manner. Accordingly, there is always a person, one or more officials with appropriate capacity and authority behind each program. So here the work of GIS “Poseidon” is no different from other systems.
— The beauty of GIS is that it does not see the views held by this or that official; Regardless of the level of position, the apparatus will react to any fluctuations related to the official's financial situation. It is very important that the machine is soulless in this respect, it provides information regardless of what position it occupies.
— In our country, corrupt officials have learned to circumvent already existing declaration procedures. You may recall the story of the former president of the Adygea Supreme Court with 15 billion rubles allocated as assets to relatives and the chairman of the jury, of which about 5 or 6 billion rubles were also allocated to the assets of relatives, acquaintances, friends. Why do you think Poseidon failed to resolve these identified cases? In your opinion, isn't the public declaration an additional guarantee that the qualified civil servant being tested will pay more attention in checking and processing these results?
– No, the system works very efficiently but there is no limit to its perfection, this is proven by the figures I cited on the conversion of property, money and other valuables not only from the corrupt official himself, but also from his relatives into state income. I'm rounding up, 165 billion rubles were collected in state revenue in 2025, in 2025 it was 502 billion rubles, and this year it is expected that about 1 trillion rubles of illegal proceeds. This is not only for those who are specifically responsible for bribery, this is property transferred to relatives and acquaintances.
Now the Poseidon system is used to check submitted declarations. This is a closed circuit and not publicly accessible. However, the current mechanism for how officials declare income needs to be modernized, said Yu Truntsevsky, head of the anti-corruption laboratory at the government-affiliated Institute of Law and Comparative Law.
— From a technological filing perspective, when we have about 1.5 million self-filing filers, plus spouses and minor children, in its current form, the system requires modernization. For me, as an official, to fill in this information, I have to contact the Federal Tax Service, request an account certificate, enter this information and spend about three days on it. My point of view is to simplify the declaration procedure, because this declaration must be made using a special information system. It will reach the declarant by mail or through government services, already filled out from these sources, and when he looks and says yes, everything is fine, then he must deliver it
— It turns out that the data will be closed to the public, but what about public control and reporting to voters?
— International standards require that reporting on the fight against corruption, not just declarations but in general, be made public. However, on the other hand, let's take into account the effect of posting these statements: we can hardly say that this somehow influenced the subsequent behavior of this person. You see a certain statement, you see that a person has an apartment, a car, and what conclusions do people draw from this? If this is a large crypto assets or hidden areas in Italy they were never declared anyway, it is still the responsibility of the law enforcement agencies and the public control here to not disclose this.
As a result, 318 delegates voted in favor, 24 voted against and 55 parliamentarians abstained.
