Source: HRO.org (info), 29/02/12

· Human rights activists

The human rights organisation For Human Rights has called on the Procurator General Yury Chaika to investigate reports on Vladimir Putin´s activities published in an article in The New Times, the organisation's press office announced on 28 February 2012.

The article alleged that Putin 'had been involved in numerous criminal acts of corruption over the past 11 years'.

According to the Kasparov.ru website, For Human Rights called on the Procurator to launch a criminal investigation into criminal offences reported by the media.

On 28 March [2011] the Party of People’s Freedom launched an independent report entitled Putin. Corruption, whose five chapters describe how members of the 'Ozero' cooperative got rich, the financial gains made by 'close friends of the Prime Minister', and the rising level of corruption in the country over the past eleven years. Most of the allegations contained in the 40-page booklet are based on information published in the Russian press.

The authors of the booklet claim that 'corruption has increased since Putin's second term of office'. 'Corruption in Russia ceased to be merely a problem and has become systemic. The cancer of corruption has paralysed the country's economic and social life. The annual revenue from corruption in this country has reached 300 billion dollars, a figure comparable to the annual national budget and comprising 25 percent of the country's GDP', the authors of the report state.