Prominent Ukrainian non-government organizations that fight against graft say they have teamed up to inspect the income declarations of state officials for 2015 to root out possible cases of corruption.
Representatives
of six organizations made an announcement at a joint press conference in Kyiv
on Feb. 1.
Oleksandra
Drik, head of the Civic Lustration Committee, an activists’ initiative aimed at
dismissing officials who worked at top posts under the regime of ousted
President Viktor Yanukovych, said that, according to a new poll,
non-governmental organizations and journalists have done most to fight
corruption in Ukraine in 2015.
The Kyiv
International Institute of Sociology published the poll on Jan. 27.
“One of the
key priorities for the non-government organizations for thi s year is to audit
the asset declarations of Ukrainian officials and to look for discrepancies in
them,” Drik said.
Due to
legislative changes voted through by the Ukrainian parliament in 2015, if
officials lie in their asset declarations they can face up to two years in
jail.
Officials
have now to declare not only their own property, but also explain who owns the
property that is at their disposal.
However,
this applies only to declarations filed according with the new rules – that is,
online. E-filing of asset declarations, a key requirement for Ukraine to secure
visa-free travel to the European Union, was supposed to take effect on Jan.1.
However,
the situation changed drastically when parliament passed the state budget for
2016, as an amendment was snuck into that bill to delay the electronic asset
declarations provision for a year. Parliament passed the budget bill on Dec. 25
and President Petro Poroshenko signed it on Dec. 31.
Vadym
Denysenko, a lawmaker with President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc, on Jan.5
registered a draft law that aims to cancel the amendment on postponing
e-declarations. But almost a month later, lawmakers have not yet passed the
document.
Oleksii
Khmara, the head of Transparency International Ukraine, a human rights
watchdog, said that although the deadline for 2015 declarations is April 1,
“many Ukrainian authorities rushed to file their declarations on paper, so that
they don’t face consequences for lying in (online) declarations.”
Khmara
urged society and the media to track down the declarations that state bodies
have to scan and publish on their websites, and to check whether the declared
funds correspond to the lifestyle of officials.
Viktor
Taran, head of the Center for Political Studies and Analytics, also said that
activists would push through another law that would force officials who have
already filed the paper declarations to file them again online.
“There is a
tense fight going on in parliament over this bill,” he said. “By the way,
voting or not voting for the law would be another test for our officials.”
Although
e-filing of asset declarations is yet to be implemented, civil society has been
already analyzing the assets declared by the officials for over a year now.
Dmytro
Chaplinsky, who with volunteers and journalists, created an online register of
the declarations, said that in 2015 activists scanned and published more than
18,000 declarations.
“When the
new system is launched, we expect up to a million of the declarations (to
appear online) per year,” he said. “Such information will lead to the
investigations, scandals, dismissals.”
He said
that the new system is almost ready and is under testing at the moment.
Initially,
the declarations filed online are supposed to be verified by the new state body
– the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption.
The cabinet
passed the ruling about its launch in March 2015. However, the agency has not
been formed yet.
The
commission that was created to appoint the board of the agency has chosen three
of its five board members. To choose another two managers, the commission
launched new selection roun, as they could not agree on the results of the
first one.
The
commission has already shortlisted 40 candidates out of 109 that applied.
