On Mar. 30, The Ministry of Justice started work on a new draft law, which should help to reload and renew the management of the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC). Before, the relevant order was given by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroisman, who criticized the work of the NAPC management and urged its members to resign during a meeting of the Government.
Obviously, this decision might be caused by problems with the functioning of the Single State Register of electronic declarations of civil servants. Due to the system failures, officials participating in the second stage of the declaration cannot fill in and submit declarations properly. Therefore, it threatens them with criminal liability, since, Apr. 1 is the deadline for declarations filing completed on, May 1 – for those who fills them for the first time.
On Mar. 28, the e-declaration system was out of order. As of today, it is in a normal mode of operation.
It should be noted that since Mar. 29, representatives of the global coalition against corruption Transparency International in Ukraine, the anti-corruption group of the Reanimation Package of Reforms, the Center for Combating Corruption, All-Ukrainian association “AutoMaidan” and Bihus.Info appealed to the Government with a joint statement to change the NAPC management.
According to the activists’ statement, the NAPC management deliberately sabotaged the work of the register of electronic declarations of civil servants and blocked the main functions assigned to the newly created body for a year. This resulted in the system failure before a few days till the end of the second stage of the declaration.
Inability of the NAPC to provide verification of the civil servants’ declarations of the first declaration stage was also criticized. For a year, either a system for automated verification of declarations wasn’t created and the access to other sources of verification wasn’t provided, activists noted.
As reported this week, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) put on hold cooperation with the NAPC. However, director of USAID Regional Mission in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova Susan K.Frits denied this information.