10 Prominent Political Figures Accused of Plagiarism

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Thursday, January 19, 2017

8. Vladimir Putin

Russia's President Vladimir Putin holds a glass during a ceremony of receiving diplomatic credentials from foreign ambassadors at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, November 9, 2016. | (Photo: REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin)

According to his official biography, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended a doctoral thesis on economics at the St. Petersburg State Mining Institute.

In 2006, researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington reviewed a copy of the dissertation and concluded that it lifted heavily from a textbook from 1978.

News of the apparent plagiarism did little damage to Putin's reputation in Russia, possibly because, according to a 2013 Time Magazine article, plagiarism is common practice in the Eastern European nation.

"It's an open secret in Russia today that many politicians and businessmen pad their resumes with fake diplomas, either plagiarizing their dissertations or paying someone to do it for roughly the cost of a midsize sedan," reported Time.

"Since the fall of the Soviet Union, no real effort has been made to stop this practice, in part because so many of the country's elite — all the way up to President Vladimir Putin — might have their graduate work scrutinized."