In the organization’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, Russia’s transparency rating fell from last year’s 2.2 to 2.1, on a scale of 0.0 (“highly corrupt”) to 10.0 (“very clean”). Additionally, it’s country ranking fell from 146 out of 180 countries to 154 out of 178 countries, landing between Papua New Guinea and Tajikistan.

Within Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Russia was ranked 16 out of 20, with the only countries more corrupt listed as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The organization estimates that the market for corruption in Russia is worth $300 billion a year.

While authors of the report did not comment on individual countries, they advised overall that “governments need to integrate anti-corruption measures in all spheres, from their responses to the financial crisis and climate change to commitments by the international community to eradicate poverty” in order to combat corruption.

Political commentator Anton Orekh responded to the report by saying that Russia would continue to fall in the ratings “until honest people become the most powerful ones in the country.”

“To say it plainly, take away the bureaucrats’ unlimited authorities, leave them with only the most necessary functions, and you will defeat corruption,” said Orekh. “Because corruption is the way of life for parasites, and our bureaucrats have become precisely parasites.”

The countries ranked in the report as the most transparent were Denmark, New Zealand, and Singapore, while Somalia, Myanmar, and Afghanistan were seen as the most corrupt. The United States came in at 22nd place, and China at 78th.

Transparency International noted that since “corruption – whether frequency or amount – is to a great extent a hidden activity that is difficult to measure,” the level of the perception of corruption in any given country was chosen as a telling alternative. “Over time, perceptions have proved to be a reliable estimate of corruption,” says the organization.

In an official blog post on Monday, Senior Vice President and Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said that the company was disturbed at news that its own lawyers have possibly been engaged in colluding with the Russian authorities to suppress activists and journalists deemed undesirable by the state. In particular, an article by the New York Times cited a raid on the Baikal Environmental Wave, during which Russian police confiscated a dozen computers under the premise that the group was using stolen Microsoft software:

After the raid, the group reached out to Microsoft’s Moscow office, seeking help in defending itself.

Baikal Wave asked Microsoft to confirm that its software was legal, but the company would not, angering the environmentalists. And Microsoft’s local lawyer in Siberia offered testimony to the police in the case on the value of the software that was said to have been stolen.

Whatever the legitimacy of these claims, said Smith, Microsoft has chosen to err on the side of caution and provide a free blanket software license to all non-governmental organizations in Russia. The license doesn’t even require an application, so all organizations are automatically covered.

Microsoft had previously, in 2008, denied knowledge of practices by the Russian authorities of harassing NGOs and journalists and using the fight against piracy as an excuse. Theoretically, the new blanket license should make it harder for Russian law enforcement to wantonly confiscate computers from advocacy organizations.

Ironically, reports on Tuesday also surfaced that a series of Russian human rights organizations have received letters from regional prosecutors demanding documentation about the groups’ financial and organizational activities. As Elena Panfilova of Transparency International’s Russia branch told Ekho Moskvy radio, the affected organizations include the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, the electoral watchdog Golos, the Moscow Helsinki Group, and Transparency International itself. Why the groups are being examined was unclear, said Panfilova.

On March 29, officers Veniamin Sagalakov and Yevgeny Ivanov flagged down a truck carrying four tons of scrap metal, whose driver, as it turned out, lacked the proper documents for the cargo. “During the document check, the truck driver attempted to give the police officers a bribe in the amount of 1000 rubles (about $34), which the honest officers refused,” says a press release on the local government’s website on Friday.

As a reward for “resisting temptation,” both officers were given 10 thousand rubles at a celebratory ceremony.

Despite being a ubiquitous stereotype of Russians, bribing is indeed an illegal offense in Russia punishable by as little as a small fine or as much as up to eight years in prison. The truck driver in question faces up to three years in prison.

According to the press release, the award was part of a regional initiative begun in 2008 to try and cut down on the amount of bribes accepted by traffic police. Upon reporting an attempted bribe to their superiors, officers in Khakassia are awarded an amount ten times what had been proposed to them. Fourteen such cases were recorded in 2009, with another seven recorded in the first three months of the current year. “In these cases, all conscientious officers were awarded,” the press release says.

Fighting corruption has been one of President Dmitri Medvedev’s primary stated policy objectives since taking office in 2008, but bribery is so entrenched in Russian society that his likelihood for success is questionable at best. At a hearing just last week, the German-based carmaker Daimler admitted to paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to 22 foreign governments, including Russia, to obtain high-level contracts. The U.S. Department of Justice says that the Russian Interior Ministry, Defense Ministry, and regional government officials are guilty of accepting more than $7 million of these bribes.

Moreover, a report released last month from the Russian Interior Ministry’s economic safety department says that the average cost of a bribe doubled in 2009 from the year before. While figures for early 2010 indicate that the costs may be beginning to decline, they have a very long way to fall – the most recent comprehensive study in 2005 estimated that ordinary Russians exchanged more than $3 billion in bribes annually, a figure that doesn’t include the $316 billion paid by businesses and entrepreneurs. A 2009 study by Transparency International put Russia in 146th place worldwide on its global corruption index, only one rank higher than in 2008.

The international watchdog’s newest “Corruption Barometer” report finds that Russia has slipped from 120th to 143rd place, out of a total 160 countries. As RIA Novosti reports, Russia received a rating of 2.3 on a 10 point scale, equating it with countries like Gambia, Indonesia and Togo.

Other countries of the former Soviet Union, including Belarus and Central Asian states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, ranked even lower. On the other end, the list is predictably topped by countries in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Canada also falls into the top six.

The rating is a result of public opinion polls taken by independent pollsters around the world.

Alexander Rahr, the program director for Russia and the CIS at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told the Gazeta newspaper that the results were accurate: “The situation in Russia is getting worse,” he said. “One of the main reasons for this, in my view, is the flawed judiciary: judges are bribed and intimidated, all decisions are made via phone calls, so the courts aren’t working properly.”