In 2019, the officers of the National Anticorruption Center (NAC) will continue to document cases of corruption in the health and education systems as they did in 2018, but will devote more attention to the inspection bodies of the state, the Center’s director Bogdan Zumbreanu was quoted by IPN as saying in the talk show “Moldova live” on the public TV channel Moldova 1.
In the program, Bogdan Zumbreanu spoke about the institution’s activity since he took over a year ago. According to the NAC director, the rising figure of the crimes discovered by the NAC does not reflect the state of affairs concerning the committed acts of corruption. The rise in the figure shows mainly the people’s greater confidence in the NAC. “More persons seek now help from our institution than the previous years. The people realize that everyone should contribute to fighting corruption,” he stated.
Bogdan Zumbreau also said that the number of employees involved in the fight against corruption was increased and the respective results could be thus achieved. They firstly identified the most corrupt areas of activity where the people are mostly dissatisfied with being asked to pay money. These turned out to be education and health. “Our society became hostage to this situation. Our goal was not to identify and eliminate schemes of corruption, but to show to the authorities where there are problems and where things should be brought in order,” he stated.
According to Bogdan Zumbreanu, the fact that corruption is widespread in Moldova shows the NAC should not be regarded as the only state institution that fights corruption. Even if this is so and the NAC has the intervention instruments existing in developed states, society can also contribute to fighting corruption. “Our rules are not so harsh when an act of corruption is investigated. The Republic of Moldova is a party to the UN Convention on Human Rights and we pledged to obey particular rules,” said the official.
The NAC director noted that particular bills designed to optimize the procedures for documenting acts of corruption and making them more efficient were prepared for the future Parliament. A bill provides that the integrity test will not end with dismissal of functionaries only, but in a different way.
According to Bogdan Zumbreanu, the NAC offices in 2019 will continue to fight corruption in health and education, but will also devote attention to the inspection bodies so as to remind these that they should abide by the rules and face punishment if they don’t do it. The public servants who work as inspectors should realize that they must be honest and do their job as the quality of people’s lives depends on these inspections. They will target the inspection bodies that commit abuses.
Bogdan Zumbreanu voiced hope that the Republic of Moldova will yet reach a time when it will not need so many anti-corruption officers who would fight corruption as the officers would work mainly to prevent the phenomenon.
