Victor Stratila, deputy head of the National Integrity Commission (NIC), said that by promoting a bill to liquidate the Commission and to create a national integrity center, the authors actually sabotage the fight against corruption. In a news conference at IPN, the official said the NIC achieved very good results during the first two years of work and this troubles those who do not want to declare their incomes and property and do not want to be punished for not doing this.
Victor Stratila noted that nobody paid attention to the faults contained in the bill that provides for the liquidation of the NIC from January 1, 2016. Under the bill, integrity inspectors will be hired during three months to work at a center controlled by one manager. The draft law liquidated a collegial board such as the NIC, where the decisions are taken by a number of persons, and institutes an instrument that allows one persons to have full control, but ignores the fact that neither the Commission nor the newly created center will be able to work during two years because the necessary regulations are yet to be drafted and will take effect only in 2018.
According to Victor Stratila, during the first year of work, the members of the Commission drew up over 360 reports based on which ministers and public servants were punished contraventionally and a number of functionaries in conflicts of interests were to be dismissed based on these cases. But the legal gaps prevented this from happening. This is yet not the blame of the NIC as its duty is to take the case up to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Penal Code should be amended so that the prosecutors could send the cases to court without being obliged to prove that the public servant didn’t declare the incomes and property because he/she wanted to hide them.
The NIC deputy head also said that the Commission has been hampered until now as well. When the members discovered that the minister of finance faced a conflict of interests, the Commission could not work for two months as its accounts were blocked. Afterward, when they identified incompatibility in relation to the minister of justice, there was submitted this bill to liquidate the NIC. Nowhere in the EU did they replace a collegial board such as the NIC with a dictatorial one, when control is held by one person. When the number of persons is higher, it is harder to influence them and this is the reason why this bill is promoted by those who do not like such a situation.
Victor Stratila denied bill authors’ accusations that the NIC is not efficient, saying the number of cases over income and property hiding and over conflicts of interests transmitted to the Prosecutor General’s Office over the last two years rose four times, while the number of cases submitted to the National Anticorruption Cases – seven times.
Stratila asked himself what kind of justice reform will be done if the fight against corruptions is sabotaged. He called on all those who are for the real reformation of the legal system to analyze this bill and to join efforts so as to prevent its adoption as this would be a step backward in the process of combating corruption.
