The draft law introduces provisions to the Criminal Code stipulating the fines for commercial kickbacks and the giving and taking of bribes at 100 times the sum involved and within 500 million rubles (around $17 million).
Administrative Offences Code will be supplemented with a new chapter on legal assistance in cases of administrative offences involving legal proceedings in other countries, above all with regard to legal entities on whose behalf or in whose interests bribes were paid.
The Russian Government and Supreme Court have both given the draft law a positive assessment.
The draft law was discussed at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Countering Corruption chaired by Mr Medvedev on January 13, 2011.