The bill with the amendments needed to prevent and fight corruption, conflicts of interest and corruption risks was included in the June 25 and June 28 meetings of the Government, but could not be found in the Cabinet’s final agenda.
In a news conference at IPN, the head of the Anticorruption Alliance Olga Batca said the bill contains a series of very useful provisions for supplementing the existing policies, which were formulated during 12 years. But it also includes deficiencies that must be removed. The notion of public servant is not sufficiently explained and does not cover all the persons employed in the public sector. It is also necessary to introduce penalties for the non-declaration of conflicts of interest when they occur. The bill covers these deficiencies.
According to Olga Batca, the professional integrity of public servants must be tested this August already. “These provisions are necessary for making sure that the signed conventions are implemented, for putting into practice the national anticorruption plan and strategy as well as the Association Agreement. Regardless of the reasons invoked by the by the authorities to explain this delay, we demand that this bill be adopted in the near future,” stated the head of the Anticorruption Alliance.
The representatives of civil society gave as example the case of the construction company Glorinal, which, according to them, is a case of high-level corruption that is being ignored. Executive director of the Public Policy Institute Arcadie Barbarosie said that civil society demands annulling the Cabinet’s June 29 decision to exempt Glorinal from paying the debt of 25 million lei to the state budget.
Arcadie Barbarosie also said that civil society has a number of questions concerning the relations between the state and this company and is dissatisfied with the preferential behavior shown to a private business, in breach of the law on state aid.
