The NACP welcomes the adoption of the draft law on the restoration of mandatory e-declaration in the first reading, but warns against certain risks

The National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) welcomes the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in the first reading of draft law No. 9534, which restores the mandatory electronic declaration of wealth of officials, suspended due to the introduction of martial law. The finally adopted law should be such that it will not allow the institution of declaration to be distorted as the most systematic tool for ensuring the integrity of public officials. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account all security aspects related to martial law. Therefore, during the preparation for the second reading, the draft law needs certain amendments (including the exclusion of some provisions), indicated below. 1 — Regarding the need to declare the use of only real estate, the market value of which, within the reporting period, exceeds 50 subsistence minimums. The proposed version will encourage dishonest declarants to hide the objects they used. In addition, this provision will complicate the declaration process, as it will place an additional burden on the declarant, namely the need to determine the market value of property use. As a result, due to the lack of a unified approach in determining the market value, the risks for the declarant to be held criminally and administratively liable for non-declaration of information become obvious. A similar risk concerns the complete cancellation of the rule according to which persons should declare the property they use as of the last day of the period for which the declaration is submitted. 2 — Regarding the opening of the public part of the register of declarations, as well as providing the subjects of the declaration with access only to the information contained in the public registers, about them and their family members. Implementation of the necessary technical solutions to open access to declarations while simultaneously closing access to data on other persons specified in the declaration, as well as closing access to data on employees of the security and defense forces, will require additional time, financial and human resources, the creation of registers as a first step employees of the security and defense forces and providing access to them by the Register of Declarations, and therefore this should be taken into account in the final and transitional provisions of the draft law. 3 — Deprivation of the NACP's authority to provide clarification on the application of the provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On Prevention of Corruption" and other normative legal acts. It will obviously lead to different approaches in the understanding, interpretation and application of anti-corruption mechanisms. 800,000 declarants will be deprived of the opportunity to receive clarification on how to honestly declare assets. The clarification on the protection of whistle-blowers, removal of corrupt officials from positions, and others will lose their validity. Given the complexity of anti-corruption legislation, clarifications perform a preventive function in preventing corruption and corruption-related offenses. Thus, the NACP proposes to restore the declaration, while preventing the creation of loopholes for unscrupulous officials. The above-mentioned provisions of the draft law should be finalized in the process of preparing draft law No. 9534 for the second reading. We will remind you that Ukraine has undertaken to restore mandatory declaration and the authority of the NACP to check declarations. The memorandum with the IMF provides that the relevant law should be adopted by the end of July 2023. Representatives of the European Commission, G7, GRECO, the World Bank and other international institutions have repeatedly stated that Ukraine should resume declaration.