What kind of data can be collected during basic pre-employment screening?

First of all you have to take into consideration that in Russia you won’t ever get standard criminal background or credit history report of the employee.

Criminal records: There are no “open for public” databases of criminal records in Russia. Moreover, except for serious (or organized) crime, police has no federal database of crime participators. That’s why if we try to get criminal background records of the employee, the task should be split into 2 different steps:

1. Check if the employee was named in the Federal database as an offender or terrorist (pay attention that this source is also “for authorized use only”)
2. Check local database of criminal records to find if the employee was prosecuted or detained by the police (no chance to get this data unless you have a strong relations with local authorities).

There’s also another way of collecting criminal background information – check illegal databases of organized crime participants and offenders which is available on the black market. This database is not up to date (newest records dated 2002) and doesn’t pretend to be full. I can’t recommend you to rely on this source of information, but if you try to save your time & money, this is the only source you have. Elsewhere you will have to “investigate” and get information directly from police databases.

Credit history: It is a long story which started in 2004, when the Federal Law 213-F3 “About credit history” dated 12.30.2004 was published. According to this Law, several Credit bureaus are to be organized. Banks are welcomed but not obliged to sign agreement with Credit bureaus and disclose information about their debtors. As the result there are databases of Russian citizens credit history, but they are not reliable (if the Subject get financial credit from the bank which is not in the disclosure program, this data will be hardy available). With the permission of the Subject you can get information about his criminal background, but the only legal way to get credit history of the Subject is to take his Power of Attorney.

So, what will we find in the basic background screening report of Russian employee?

National registration data of the Subject (First name, Second name, Fathers name, date of birth, passport number, registered address). Registered address (so called “propiska”) is a kind of legal address. Very often registered address doesn’t mean place of residence.

Tax ID (Individual tax number, INN) – identification of the private person in tax police

Driving license (including expiry date)

Relatives of the Subject – only if they are registered at the same address.

Ownership of vehicles (VIN, registered number, date of registration)

Ownership of premises

Involvement in legal bodies

Criminal background – only Federal database data (see above)

I’ve seen different reports produced by local and international companies but the truth is that this data is the only valid information about the employee that can be collected without investigation.