52% of Russians say official structures not honest

More than half of respondents in a recent nationwide poll said they did not trust a single branch of government in Russia, according to the findings released Monday. The October survey of 1,600 people conducted by the independent ROMIR polling company highlighted low public respect for authorities widely viewed as corrupt and dishonest.

In the poll, 52 percent of respondents said they did not consider a single branch of power to be honest; 30 percent said they believed the president was honest. The level of trust for the nation's top courts, prosecutor general's office and parliament was in single digits, the AP says.

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Corruption long has been an endemic problem in Russia, but a recent study by the Indem Institute concluded that bribes paid by businesses to police, licensing bodies and state inspectors had soared by nearly 10 times since President Vladimir Putin came to power.

On Transparency International's scale of corruption in 145 countries, Russia scored at No. 90, along with Mozambique and Malawi, compared to No. 71 three years ago. The least corrupt country was Finland at No. 1, while Haiti and Bangladesh share the most corrupt spot at the bottom of the scale.

T.E.