Russia president signs decree to establish anti-corruption council News
Russia president signs decree to establish anti-corruption council

[JURIST] Russian President Dmitry Medvedev [official profile] has signed a measure to establish an anti-corruption council to be headed by Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin [profile, in Russian], Medvedev announced at a Monday press conference [remarks]. Medvedev said that a comprehensive national anti-corruption program was necessary to tackle social and economic graft and also to eliminate a prevailing culture of corruption. Medvedev has previously vowed to clean up corruption in his inauguration speech [JURIST report]. RIA Novosti has more.

Corruption is an on-going problem in Russia. In 2006, Transparency International [advocacy website], an anti-corruption advocacy group, reported that incidents of corrupt activity were up to seven times more prevalent that year than they were in 2001. Bribes totaling $240 billion are taken by corrupt officials in Russia [JURIST news archive] on a yearly basis, according to a report by a senior Russian prosecutor earlier that year.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Ku Klux Klan founded

The US hate group known as the Ku Klux Klan was founded on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a reaction to reconstruction efforts following the Union victory in the American Civil War. The group would later become notorious for its attacks on Black Americans, being targeted by the Enforcement Act of 1871, which imposed civil and criminal liability for deprivation of constitutional rights. Read the Enforcement Act of 1871.  

Hamid Karzai born

On December 24, 1957, Hamid Karzai was born in Karz, Afghanistan. He would go on to become in 2004 his country's first elected president after the end of Taliban rule in 2001.