Anastasia Lyadskaya: The Institution of Independent Anti-Corruption Review in Russia Has Growth Potential

“Our Association for Sustainable Industrial Development has been operating as an accredited legal entity acting as an independent expert since 2022 and currently is one of 48 active experts among legal entities. That means fewer than fifty such organizations across the entire country (according to the Ministry of Justice Register as of May 21, 2026). At the same time, their actual activity in conducting reviews remains highly questionable.

As an example, I will cite our Association: over four years in this capacity, we have prepared more than fifty reviews (we set ourselves an internal standard of one review per month), regularly participate in профильные events with presentations, share our best practices with the community, took part in collecting materials for AI training, and so on. Meanwhile, other expert legal entities demonstrate only isolated activity, which unfortunately suggests that this branch of independent anti-corruption review is ineffective.

Some of our colleagues even propose recognizing the effectiveness of this institution as extremely low, the experiment of its implementation in the Russian Federation as unsuccessful, and abandoning it altogether, since the main problems associated with its functioning as a whole persist to this day and in some respects have even worsened.

Let me remind you that in 2025, the Ministry of Justice of Russia amended the Administrative Regulations governing the accreditation of legal entities and individuals wishing to obtain accreditation to conduct anti-corruption reviews as independent experts, significantly tightening the requirements for the professional qualifications of accredited persons (15 years of experience and strictly a higher legal education). These changes were adopted without the approval of the professional community and, notably, without conducting the very independent anti-corruption review itself. The document did not appear on the regulatory legal acts draft portal, which we monitor on an ongoing basis, nor could it be found afterward.

It is obvious that such restrictions will sharply reduce the number of independent anti-corruption experts, and given the already modest level of activity among both individuals and legal entities, I assume this may lead to the complete degeneration of the institution.

Independent anti-corruption review cannot serve as a primary type of activity—it is not incentivized in any way and is carried out, in essence, out of conscience and innate civic engagement. It is also unclear why only lawyers should be engaged in such work.

Overall, it appears that separating anti-corruption review into a distinct type of review (alongside legal review and regulatory and actual impact assessment) is no longer relevant, although its essence is undoubtedly useful and sound. Ideally, it would be appropriate to integrate various types of document reviews into a unified system, move it to the project development stage, and encourage public authorities to proactively involve experts in improving documents.

However, I would like to end on a positive note. To our great satisfaction, we have recently observed growing interest from businesses in incorporating anti-corruption review into their internal business processes.

Having practical experience in implementing such review in a number of large companies in the real sector of the economy, I can assert that not only in the public sector but also in private business, documents (in this case, local regulations) may contain corruption risk factors—this may result either from inattention or insufficient qualifications of the drafter, or from deliberate self-interest. To avoid such problems, in August 2026 we plan to hold a specialized professional development course on this topic—I hope it will be useful and in demand,” Anastasia Lyadskaya is confident.