Unfinished work in fight against corruption

Transparency – Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International) reminds that today we celebrate International Anticorruption Day. That day was established by General Assembly of UN due to the fact that on December 9th 2003 begun signing process of UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC)[1].

Many Laws that were adopted in the past 11 years were aligned to this Convention, but a lot of work remains to be done, especially when it comes to accomplishing of effective anticorruption mechanisms in practice. Employment and promotion system in many parts of public sector was not completely based on objective criteria, and in previous year chance to make huge improvements in public enterprises’ work, by implementing the new Law[2], was missed. Transparency of data on decision making process still remains unsatisfactory, and „protection of persons that report facts related to corruption“was only just recently regulated by Law. Contrary to adopted regulations, political influence remains crucial not only to election of directors in public sector but of many professionals as well, and numerous suspicions to party employment, due to which public sector is oversized, still remain uninvestigated. Influencing to decision making process in executive and legislative instance still remains mostly hidden due to inexistence of regulations on lobbing and missing to organize public debates before adoption of the law in most of the cases, even when obligatory. Direct negotiation of Government representatives with investors, that resultsafterwards with citizens being ignorant on whether the best possible solution was chosen, represents special problem. Law on protection of whistleblowers, adopted in previous month, brings useful novelties, but misses the opportunity to include certain important provisions[3] that would contribute to increase in number of reported cases of corruption. Numerous suspicions related to sources of election campaign financing, public resources abuse and buying of votes in 2012 and 2014, weren’t processed in court.

It is important to have in mind that UN Convention Against Corruption invites its member states to include criminal act of illicit enrichment into their legal systems, defined as "striking increase of public official’s/servant’s property that he/she cannot reasonably explain in regards to his/hers legal incomes". Transparency - Serbia demanded unsuccessfully, for more than a year, enlisting of this criminal act into Criminal Code. Intention to do so was stated in National Anticorruption Strategy. According to deadlines from Action Plan, by June 2014 Ministry of Justice should have prepared amendments to Criminal Law, and National Assembly should have adopted these changes this month, which clearly won’t happen. Transparency – Serbia feels that it is necessary, parallel to process of enlisting this criminal act into legal system, to resolve all dilemmas on several times announced adoption of the Law on Investigating of Property Origin and to publish data on recent implementation of measures for cross-examining of property and incomes that was envisaged in 2003 by the Law on Tax Procedure and Tax Administration.

Transparency – Serbia

Belgrade, 9th of December 2014

[1]Serbia (SCG) ratified this Convention in December 2005.

[2]http://www.transparentnost.org.rs/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=960%3Asaoptenje-za-javnost-zakon-nije-doneo-depolitizaciju-javnih-preduzea&catid=40%3Asaoptenje&Itemid=52&lang=sr

[3] Transparency – Serbia delivered to all deputy groups in National Assembly over fourty draft amendments to draft Law on protection of Whistleblowers http://www.transparentnost.org.rs/images/stories/inicijativeianalize/amandmani%20TS%20na%20predlog%20zakona%20o%20zastiti%20uzbunjivaca%20novembar%202014.docx