Russia's public watchdogs in general and its judiciary in particular have deteriorated in the last few years but Moscow is investing heavily in improving its court system, a World Bank official said on Wednesday.
"Russia has adopted quite a few reforms ... but the sense is that the implementation has not been as strong as the reforms," said Cheryl Gray, co-author of an anti-corruption survey of former communist countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
"There's also a strong sense that institutions of accountability and of checks and balances have deteriorated somewhat over the last few years in Russia," Gray added.
Russia, and a number of other former communist countries in the study, concentrated on stabilising their economies after Russia's 1998 financial crisis and put off reforming their justice systems until now, she said. Perhaps the most well known of controversial Russian judicial proceedings this year is that of oil company Yukos, where a court-appointed administrator asked the court to put the company into receivership.