Two bills for which the Government assumed responsibility, which contain amendments to the legislation on mortgage, contain corruptible provisions that run counter to the legislation. The Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption, which appraised them, ascertained that their provisions are to the detriment of debtors. The results of the assessments were presented in a news conference at IPN.
Speaking about one of the two bills with amendments to the Law on Mortgage, the Law on Financial Institutions and other legal acts, expert Mariana Kalughin said there is no fundamental analysis of the conditions that necessitated the drafting of the bill and no economic-financial substantiation.
Mariana Kalughin noted that the most serious inconsistency is the fact that the National Bank of Moldova and the Ministry of Justice become central depositary. However, the Law on the Capital Market provides that the activity of central depositary is licensed and a license is issued only to a joint stock company. The giving of such powers to the National Bank of Moldova and the Ministry of Justice is unjustified and conceptually unacceptable, while the potential impact of such an extension is not beneficial to the market.
The expert said that given the identified facts, it’s not clear why the Government assumed responsibility before Parliament for these bills as such a measure as a simplified lawmaking method is taken in extremis as a result of an emergency.
Expert Eduard Iftodii assessed the second bill with amendments to the Fiscal Code and the Law on Mortgage. He said that the bill promotes the narrow interests of financial institutions and microfinance organizations or leasing companies, favoring them and giving them priority to debtors’ interests. The bill contains ambiguous formulations, legal gaps and norms that set excessive powers and that promote interests against the public interest.
CAPC head Galina Bostan concluded that an imbalance appeared between the rights of creditors and the rights of debtors following the adoption of the two bills. Taking into account the costs of loans and the size of the interest rate as well as the fact that the last bill will have a retroactive effect, the situation of debtors will worsen as they took out loans in certain conditions and now new conditions are imposed on them. The bills increase the probability of abuses on the part of creditors. They will be declared unconstitutional if the Constitutional Court is asked to pronounce on them.
The appraisal was carried out within the project “Harmonization of the legislation with the international standards on human rights”, which is supported financially by the Human Rights Defenders of Sweden.
