MOSCOW, April 11 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared earnings on Monday one-third higher than his partner in Russia's ruling tandem, President Dmitry Medvedev, whose wife revealed she has no savings and owns a decade-old Volkswagen.
Putin, who ruled as president from 2000 to 2008 before becoming premier, made 5 million rubles ($179,000) compared to Medvedev’s 3.4 million rubles ($121,000), both men declared in statements posted on their official websites.
The disclosures by Russian top government officials on Monday have been ordered by Medvedev since 2009 as part of an anti-graft campaign that has been key pledge of his presidency.
Medvedev has said he will decide together with Putin who will run for Russia’s top job in March 2012 elections, but analysts say it will really be up to Putin as to who will run.
Kremlin critics have ridiculed the declarations, saying the true earnings of officials from bribes and kickbacks are many fold higher in Russia, which ranks a lowly 154th on Transparency International’s 178-nation corruption index.
Medvedev reported having 14 deposits in Russian banks worth a total of 5 million rubles, while his wife Svetlana listed three empty bank accounts.
A self-declared housewife, the first lady’s income statement showed she owned little more than a 1999 Volkswagen Golf, which she has listed for each of the last three years.
Putin’s spouse Lyudmila declared an income of 146,201 rubles ($5,221).
Minister of Natural Resources Yuri Trutnev was Russia’s highest-earning official in 2010, pocketing more than Medvedev and Putin with declared wages of 114.7 million rubles ($4 million).
In U.S. diplomatic cables leaked last year, diplomats speculated about Putin’s personal wealth and shared Moscow rumours that the former KGB spy has vast hidden assets abroad and links to Russia’s lucrative oil export trade.
The U.S. cables posted on WikiLeaks described Russia as a "corrupt autocracy", where money has replaced Communism as the driving ideology for the elite since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
Putin has denied amassing a vast fortune while president, and he once dismissed speculation about his personal wealth as snot smeared over paper.
