Russia has launched an anti-corruption campaign, creating special units within state agencies and ministries to clean them of corrupt officials and perform background checks on potential employees.

From now on, every single government ministry, department and agency will contain a subdivision purely devoted to fighting corruption within the department and among its employees.

The subdivision will have from 3 to 5 employees, preferably former officials from the FSB or Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who will be investigating, performing background checks on every employee, cross-referencing the information they provided on their income assets to make sure there are no briberies taking place, and generally ensuring that all the employees operate under the regulations applicable to civil servants.

"This campaign will give the possibility to the political parties, all Russian NGOs, and prosecutors to file a special request to check some of the officials," said Ivan Ninenko from Transparency International Russia, an NGO investigating corruption.

"Interpol is officially saying they are going to cooperate with checking property abroad," Ninenko told RT. Some critics, however, argue that the new system may not be transparent enough, and that it should be done by an external body.

Other specialists say that these measures are better than nothing, as the situation with corruption in Russia is already critical. In the first 6 months of 2009, there were 4,500 cases of corruption brought to Russian courts, over 500 of them against public officials and 700 against law enforcement agencies.

The national anti-corruption committee has estimated that every year a huge amount - an estimated $300 billion - is paid in bribes to public officials. Moreover, Russia ranks 146 out of 180 nations - below Pakistan and Libya - in the corruption index run by Transparency International.

Experts believe that fighting corruption will help to modernize the country, develop business, bring foreign investors' money into the country and protect Russian investors.