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The average bribe given in Russia has tripled over twelve months to reach 27,000 rubles, the chief of the Interior Ministry's department for economic security, Yuri Shalakov, said after a meeting of the coordinating council of chiefs of the CIS countries' tax and financial investigations authorities.

He acknowledged that the struggle against corruption was still ineffective.

"The results of law enforcers in the struggle against corruption, despite the measures being taken, still fall short of the scale of this ill, and by no means rise to society's expectations. This shows that the struggle against corruption is not so much legal as political one," Shalakov said.

Over the past six months the economic crimes divisions exposed 50 percent more corruption-related crimes.

"The average size of a bribe, according to the documented instances of corruption, has tripled over one year to 27,000 rubles," he said.

The chief of the Interior Ministry's economic security department also said that this year far more white collar crimes were exposed.

"In the current complicated economic situation we have managed to raise the effectiveness of resistance to criminal encroachments. Since the beginning of this year economic crimes units of the Interior Ministry exposed 31,000 crimes in the economic sphere, which is 7.4 percent more than in the same period last year," Shalakov said.

He said there were good achievements in resistance to organized crime.

"We have prevented two times more crimes by organized groups and criminal communities than in the whole of last year," he said.

Also, in the first half of this year law enforcers exposed over 7,000 crimes related to money laundering, 13.2 percent more than a year earlier.

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