The proposal to ban the local elected officials and their husbands/wives from possessing property or deposits abroad, which was submitted by a member of Parliament, runs counter to the Constitution’s provisions concerning the right to private property and to the European Convention on Human Rights, consider experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC), who assessed the corruptibility of the bill on the conflict of interests, the law on the prevention and combating of corruption and of the amendments proposed to the Penal Code.
In a news conference at IPN, CAPC head Galina Bostan said the bill on the conflict of interests provides that the local elected officials and their husbands or wives cannot possess deposits in foreign banks or other property abroad and cannot hold ownership rights, any type of securities or social shares in foreign companies that do not reside in Moldova. The bans are not applied only when the local elected officials or their children need treatment abroad and when a bank account abroad is needed for performing the job duties. Thus, if the local elected officials come by inheritance into possesses of property situated abroad, they will have to sell it within six months of the acceptance of the legacy.
Galina Bostan underlined it’s clear that the authorities will be unable to obtain information from foreign authorities about the public functionaries’ property abroad. But this problem can be solved by strengthening the capacity of the National Integrity Commission to assess the property of the local elected officials. The Commission should be empowered to ask for and verify the information about property within possible criminal cases over false income statements.
“Such a ban is dangerous. We cannot exclude the fact that those who have property abroad will register it in the name of other persons and the situation will thus worsen,” said the CAPC head.
By another legislative initiative, a new article is added to the Penal Code, which introduces a new offense component – violation of the ban on possessing bank accounts and property abroad. “The informative note to this bill does not contain a fundamental analysis of the conditions that call for such a law and of the level of compatibility of the proposed norms with the legislation, including with the constitutional provisions,” stated Galina Bostan.
The experts recommended thoroughly exclaiming the bills.
