Implementation of policy on conflicts of interest was reduced practically to zero, TI-Moldova

Twenty central public authorities, many of whom have inspection and supervision powers, did not inform about conflict of interest situations even if the law provides this, shows a monitoring performed by Transparency International Moldova (TI-Moldova). In a news conference on November 28, TI-Moldova expert Ianina Spinei said it’s hard to believe that no servant of the 20 institutions experienced such situations. The monitoring covered all the ministries, the National Anticorruption Center, the Customs Service, the Land Relations and Cadastre Agency, and the Fiscal Inspectorate, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to the expert, given that the National Integrity Commission started work this year later than planned, the process of declaring and solving conflicts of interest wasn’t supervised and penalties for breaking the law couldn’t be imposed. Thus, the prevention of corruption by implementing the policy on the treatment of conflicts of interest in 2012 was reduced practically to zero. Among other problems related to the implementation of this policy is the insufficient familiarization of the servants, especially of persons responsible for the collection of statements of interests, with the relevant legislation, and the difficulties in filling out the statements of personal interests owing to the absence of instructions. The study also showed that the central public authorities took measures to create internal mechanisms for submitting statements of personal interests. The best results in this respect were achieved by the National Anticorruption Center, the Ministry of Justice, and the State Main Tax Inspectorate, while the worst ones – by the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Culture. In order to remove the identified problems, the expert recommended stimulating the work of the National Integrity Commission and facilitating the verification of statements by the Commission by creating a unified database that would enable to compare the information from the statements and identify the discrepancies, etc. The monitoring was carried out within the Monitoring the Implementation of Anticorruption Policies at the Central Public Authorities Project that is financed by Soros Foundation Moldova.