“The Anti-Corruption Strategy stipulates that being honest should be easy,”– NACP Head

Among the goals of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) is to simplify the process of filling out declarations for honest officials, both technically and legally. The Head of the NACP, Oleksandr Novikov, stated so in his interview to the Ukrainian Radio. “We would like to simplify as much as possible. Including both the technical part and the legal part of filling out declarations.  All persons who do not engage in corrupt practices work for the benefit of citizens; it should be very easy for them to fill out a declaration,” – stated the Head of the NACP. He added that indeed, prior to the resetting of the NACP, an unstable operation model of the Register of Declarations was provided, according to which the hardware for its operation was leased annually, while at the same time being located on the territory of the “Ukrainian Special Systems” State Enterprise. Following the NACP reset, the procurement of hardware has already been initiated which will be administered by the Agency’s employees. “This year we are planning to transition to the new servers of the Register of Declarations […].  This is first. Second, there will be a new software product, a more user-friendly Register.  Since we realize that 900 thousand people fill out declarations, we are going to provide them with a convenient service. The Anti-Corruption Strategy envisages that it should be easy, to be honest,” – Oleksandr Novikov added. The full version of the interview is available here. Due to the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine dated 27.10.2020 No. 13-р/2020, the work of the NACP remains blocked. The NACP is deprived of the opportunity to conduct comprehensive declaration verifications, draw up reports on corruption-related administrative offenses, conduct inspections of organization of corruption-prevention work in state institutions, etc. Regardless, we believe that law-makers will find legal ways to address the situation. This is exactly why we continue working on the initiatives that will help increase the effectiveness of preventing and combatting corruption in Ukraine, following the restoration of the full functionality of the NACP.