Electronic Signature Lawfulness for Business Ethics and Conduct Disclosure Statement in European Union

How to eSign a document: electronic signature lawfulness for Business Ethics and Conduct Disclosure Statement in European Union

good day to all of you participants around the globe who are joining us today for the first webinar organized by the oecd on the anti-corruption reforms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia focus on asset and interest disclosure my name is Arisa Lich I am joining you today as the moderator from London's chattam house where I uh am a research fellow at Russia and Eurasia program and also head of Ukraine Forum it's a pleasure to have a session today that will dwell in depth into asset declarations and conflict of interest in particular in the region that is has entrenched practices of corruption and quite a lot of State capture and is trying to make this break through to eradicate corruption especially high level corruption uh we have an excellent panel today joining us uh I would like to inform all our participants that this session is available also in Russian and if you go and click the interpretation button on your Zoom um screen you will be able to access it in Russian and also the original is in English um and I would like to say that we have an honor and a pleasure uh to have an excellent session today this session is also streamed live on YouTube and is recorded so you will be able to share uh the proceedings that we'll be discussing today with with your networks uh and also we have a pleasure to have Deputy Secretary General of of oec Jeffrey schlagen joining us today with the introductory remarks to introduce the topic of the discussion and to give his brief overview uh on the subject uh Mr deputy secretary General over to you uh ladies and gentlemen um thank you and on behalf of the oecd I would like to welcome you to today's webinar on progress and challenges in the fight against corruption in Eastern Europe and Central Asia today we Face an unprecedented Global crisis that has led to the loss of many lives and widespread social and economic uncertainty the economic impacts are staggering oecd estimates that due to covid-19 global GDP will fall by 4.2% in 2020 at a time when governments face massive Financial demands and constraints they must ensure that their efforts to overcome the crisis are not undermined by corruption and bribery the private sector likewise faces renewed expectation that businesses will contribute to the wider social good particularly those receiving government support the oecd has been working with countries in Central Europe in Eastern Europe since the early years of the transition when countries started to build democracies and liberal economies this transition created many opportunities but it also created some big challenges including corruption which is today probably the biggest obstacle preventing citizens from enjoying the full prosperity that open markets and democracies can offer the oecd is proud to have been able to work with you during the transition and to do so in many ways the anti-corruption network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia the ACN is one such example since 1998 the network has helped to transfer Knowledge from oecd countries to your region for example it introduced in your region a peer review program the Istanbul action plan plan which is based on the model of the oecd working group on bribery the ACN has also created a regional law enforcement Network the younger sister of the oecd's group of law enforcement officials finally the network has helped Advance the business Integrity agenda in the region and provides a forum for Mutual learning between countries of the region with oecd counterparts today I'm happy to launch the fourth edition of the acn's flagship public appliation anti-corruption reforms in Eastern Europe progress and challenges covering the period of 2016 to 2019 the report highlights the progress the region has made in using it tools to fight corruption in increasing transparency and in completing legal reforms it also stresses that highlevel corruption Remains the main challenge highlevel corruption is particularly dangerous as it undermines the trust of citizens in the state and H hinders development and prosperity finding effective ways to address this challenge is therefore of particular importance this report offers some answers and is a rich resource for governments civil society and development Partners alike that will they will find valuable I also look forward to the discussion of the ACN Network's future work the main breakthrough will be the youth of new performance indicators to measure the progress of governments in fighting corruption ACN launched a pilot on December 1st to test the indicators with five ACN countries Armenia azerbajan Georgia mova and Ukraine I very much look forward to the results of this pilot this work will be not only important for the ACN as a group in the pilot countries themselves but also for the global community of anti-corruption experts who have found it difficult to develop effective and reliable indicators to measure progress in fighting corruption other parts of the oecd excuse me are also working on this challenging task the public governance directorate is developing indicators for public sector integrity and the economics department is working on indicators that link corruption and economic issues the work with your region will therefore contribute greatly to a truly global effort before concluding let me stress that the work of the ACN is made possible thanks to the strong support of our partners the oacd is very grateful to the European Union for its political and financial support in the development of the new eu4 Integrity program that will allow the ACN to apply new anti-corruption indicators in practice our partnership is important for both the region and the oecd this program will be integrated and implemented is part of the open government partnership showing how different or International organizations can unite their efforts for the common good finally I should note that this webinar can only focus on one of the chapters of the report being launched today we have chosen to focus on the role of asset and interest disclosure in the fight against corruption this is an area where ACN countries have made a lot of progress recently sometimes even surp passing oecd countries I trust that this Focus will give you a flavor of the rest of the report encourage you to read it and to engage in the work going forward this with this I'd like to wish you an interesting and useful discussion and thank you for giving me the opportunity to join you today as we try to address collectively this important effort to fight corruption thank you thank you very much deputy secretary General I think it's very important that you brought in the pressures coming from the covid pandemic and the necessities of the public sector to really deliver on so many Health Care uh challenges but also economic recovery support to small businesses and this is where uh corruption bleeds the capacity of governments to do it and becomes not only the question of get bad governance but the question of life and death and I don't think this sounds too dramatic taking into account the year we have been through uh but now I would like to bring in russan Mikel who represents the Secretariat of OCD anti-corruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and we will get a flavor of this uh quite extensive publication where Rus Sudan will present key findings but also the way oecd and ACN would like to bring this area forward in the years to come Rus Sudan over to you than thank you arisia thank you everyone thank you dasi thank you for the participants to join us um from all over the globe at the launch of the new report um anti-corruption reforms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia at this very festive occasion of 60th birthday of the oecd uh so today I will present the key findings of the section on asset and interest disclosure and our new approach to monitoring performance of anti ACN government's um under performance indicators including on asset and interest disclosure uh so in this report you will find the regional analysis that is based on the fourth round of monitoring of the Istanbul action plan which is a peer review program already mentioned by DSG uh and the desk research of the Secretariat on this spectrum of the um anti-corruption issues starting from policy to prevention enforcement and um some case studies on specific SE sectors such as uh tax um Integrity in Tax Administration uh so the issues discussed in the report for example include the independence of Judiciary and the prosecutor's office business Integrity public procurement um investigation and prosecution of high level corruption and enforce ment of corruption offenses in general so I really hope that you will find this uh report useful in your work the report has the case studies as well as Regional recommendations um and one key finding that can be uh generalized if we oversimplify it would be the following after 20 years 22 years of existence of the ACN the following is the key result uh and I'm sure you have heard this uh in many events during this month so around the anti-corruption day that um the region as well as the globe has already uh made a significant progress in introducing anti-corruption policies institutions and laws but the key challenge that remains is the enforcement especially in the high in terms of uh tackling high level corruption and the same holds true for the section that we are discussing today on asset and interest disclosure so now let's have a look at these maps and um talk about the progress and challenges in asset and interest disclosure in Four Points the first first point would be uh the laws and institutions so you can see that in all the ACN countries the legal requirements for asset and interest or assets only disclosure exists in all Asian countries um the dedicated institutions are in a fewer countries however the progress has been in this area as well uh the challenge remains though that in some countries even basic laws are missing and um the scope of disclosure that is for example the um the subjects of disclosure um that should be focused on High level and risk positions as well as the cont of disclosure is uneven in the country so some countries require a detailed disclosure of assets and interests that are important for uh uncovering illicit enrichment and conflict of interest and some uh only provide very uh limited uh disclosure um the second point is about publication of information and um in those countries where the data are open and especially in open data machine rotable format asset and interest disclosure has proven to be a very very uh strong tool for accountability and Civic oversight uh but the challenge in this area is uh again that um some countries do not provide for uh disclosure and uh do not put the information on their websites and some even regard this information confidential the third point is about the verification uh verific ation of asset declarations is key in order to be able to use them as a detection Tool uh for ilicit enrichment and conflict of interests we have seen some PR good progress on of risk-based verification however um countries um have um challenges such as the lack of uh Independence resources and um the focus on high risk areas and high level officials sometimes times verification has been really politicized and used again Pol against political opponents or arbitrarily to the selected group of people uh and last fourth point is about application of sanctions in order this tool to be even more potent and uh in this regard the enforcement is uh there in some countries but we would like to see more of the enforcement of course and in relation to high level corruption and areas uh now as already mentioned by dhg uh 2021 will be an important year for the ACN since we will start a new methodology of monitoring government performance uh based on performance indicators and um in this presentation uh the second half of the presentation will be to demonstrate a little bit to give you a taste of how we are going to do that um there are 13 perform perform indicators that cover issues from anti-corruption policy to prevention and enforcement um and one of them uh performance area three is dedicated to today's theme asset and interest disclosure and zooming into this um area you can see that we have five performance indicators the first performance indicator requires that high corruption risk positions are covered and there's a list of positions um in the performance indicators starting from the heads of the government continues to um for example Regional uh Representatives that the um high level we also have specific risk positions such as Judiciary prosecutors Etc and um second one a second indicator talks about and requires the comprehensive disclosure which has to do with the depth of the information that is provided that is necessary for uncovering conflict of interest and ilicit enrichment and that includes the list of um assets and interests that have to be disclosed beneficial ownership information expenditures etc etc and that the reg that the disclosure should be regular at a regular intervals such as for example starting the office annually and after the leaving after leaving the office the third one is about electronic system uh and its functionalities such as automatic cross check of information with the government databases in order to be able to identify red flags and uh conduct a verification based on that as well as searchability of the system open data uh format and publication of data the fourth and fifth one I I will withhold them for a little bit to go into even deeper to show you concrete requirements of the benchmarks but as you can see um the fourth one is about clarification that should be risk based and the necessary followup and the fifth one is about enforcement and sections uh each of these indicators have specific points assigned to them so you can see the pie chart here where uh the indicators about enforcement and verification have around 50% and together with the electronic system Etc the practice combines comprises 70% of the whole PA assessment so even if the countries have perfect legislation H they will not get more than 30 points under this area and uh the assessment uh ratings uh are based on this point system uh that range from outstanding to high average and low now as uh said let's go into depth a little bit and have a look what we have in the verification area uh we have um indicators that uh talk about dedicated agency and uh the indicators of practice such as um declarations should be verified dutin uh but uh with a specific focus on high risk on uh external complaints um the files that came into the agency and uh if the system has discovered the ities risk base also includes the red flag analysis a specific focus is made on an anonymous complaints that have verifiable information to make sure that external voice the citizen voice is heard and addressed in the process verification should also be prioritized not to block the agency's operation and not to set unrealistic targets which we have seen in one of the countries where 1,000 100,000 th000 declarations had to be verified in one year and um it was an impossible task to uh to perform um next indicator is about white public perception and here again we bring in the voice of citizens and Civil Society where uh we ask the governments that their work in terms of asset and interest disclosure is objective independent but also seen as such seen as objective and independent uh for the uh stakeholders um for The Wider public and lastly it's about the track record of cases referred to uh law enforcement based on the verification to make sure that uh after the verification the results um are followed up by the law enforcement agencies if they are signs of theit of enrichment for example these little dots here represent the points so 54222 55 all account to 25 % or 25 points and this is the quarter of 100 that the country can get under this indicator I will not go into detail of the fifth indicator but just to give you a taste of how we are trying to assess the enforcement in this new methodology um it's really difficult to set concrete targets for the countries to follow in terms of uh statistics or figures they need to show however it is really important to show some enforcement right that's why we attempted to tackle the issue in a comprehensive way and included the indicators which require um existence of practice of dcac and proportionate sanctions that is manifested in many different uh forms of sanctions such as administrative criminal sanctions focus on High level corruption focus on the sanctions that are uh based on verifications um uh from the media and citizen reports um and the last uh last indicator last Benchmark talks about the detail statistics that should be made available um online uh in terms of enforcement uh we try to differentiate from low to high enforcement and we have specific targets set for each one these are the levels of details that we don't need at the seminar so I'll end here thank you very much for listening to you Arisa thank you very much um so uh I guess some of our participants wondering whether this system of your indicators will be available somewhere but maybe there will be a link to the event where people can see presentation more detail because there was quite a lot of information uh presented on those slides but it's it's very interesting that you're dwelling much deeper into the verification and enforcement but also um making these policy is um you know implemented and not just being a performa somewhere in the internet the asset declarations in millions that very few people can make sense and that do not deliver policy result but now I would like to move to an excellent panel who we have that is composed both of practitioners policy makers experts who uh we have been following for decades and this is not an exaggeration the evolution of corruption policy both in the Eastern Europe Central Asia but also globally uh I will just briefly introduced who I have with me on the panel in the order that they will be uh appearing in our conversation so I would like to welcome Silvio POA from uh Buddha Bucharest who is the Secretary General of the Romanian National Integrity agency that has been set up in 200 S and syvia has been working on anticorruption for more than 12 years uh fromi we have eka um Gigi joining us who is the executive director of Transparency International Georgia she's a a prominent Civil Society actor in the anti-corruption field but EA was also Deputy head of the Border Police in Georgia uh from Kev we have Ruslan rosapa who has served at various positions but he's well known in Ukraine is one of the designers of the anti-corruption infrastructure in Ukraine he has been a prosecutor General in Ukraine for around 7 months it was brief but intense period of his career but also rouslan served in the National um Agency on on corruption prevention and Deputy Minister of Justice uh from Washington we have Laura pop who is senior financial sector specialist with the World Bank Financial Market integrity and stolen asset recover recovery initiative team and um Laura has worked uh in over 20 countries looking across the regions at uh Provisions for financial disclosure and what it means to use them for corruption uh prevention in particularly and last but not least we have Jon mels who is a policy Analyst at the oecd public sector Integrity division uh he has over 15 years of exper experience in governance anti-corruption and program management so let's go around the table our virtual table to discuss what we've heard from both deputy secretary General and Rus Sudan and I'd like to bring in Sylvio first uh from his vintage point where he is with so much experience and Romania being also in a Forefront in Eastern Europe in trying to tackle corruption um we've seen that the level of corrup corruption um is ing to public perception is not decreasing so much as some of these tools that you have in place that's been set up so how would you say the uh the anti-corruption agency in Romania has performed and did this system help to really reduce conflict of interest and decrease illicit enrichment in Romania Sylvia thank you thank you Oria uh well when we are talking about the Romanian assets disclosures for public officials I think the Stars uh were aligned for us the moment we understood that uh we have to shift the Paradigm from a ticking box approach in implementing the international standards to a system based approach where the final effectiveness of it the effectiveness of the asset disclosure system is determined by the performance of each of its parts scope of the Declarations comprehensive forms public scrutiny institutional Arrangements uh autonomy of the oversight body sanctions and so forth so all these parts not only Romanian case but in general all these parts are interdependent and fundamental to the success of the whole and uh I often compare the assets declaration systems uh with the solar system you know all these components the star planets moons asteroids Dark Matter Cosmic dust solar wind Etc are interdependent and fundamental for the entire system not to collapse under its own gravity and it of course it is also in a continuous transformation uh now back to the earth I think the Romanian experience is the story that shows the benefits of a comprehensive approach that focus focuses both on prevention and sanctioning when it comes to asset disclosure conflicts of interest unexplained increase in assets incompatibilities and uh and so forth so I know we are on a fast pace here so let me illustrate uh this assertion with just two examples from our work the first one is related to conflicts of interest in public procurement and this aspect is uh extremely sensitive since the procurement Market in Romania is around 15 billion euros per year so at first there was our prerogative of investigated consumed conflict of interest that occurred in public procurement uh external signals brought into our attention potential cases of conflict of interest where public procurement contracts were signed with companies held by relatives of these public officials so the penalties for these officials contined to be let's say non- dissuasive but the most important sanction contracts being cancelled and money retrieved to the state budget uh was utterly impossible to enforce so it was clear from this point of view that we had a problem and the solution to this was to shift the Paradigm from the consumed conflicts of interest to the potential conflict of interest you know from sanctioning to prevention so we developed this system this it system with the purpose of preventing the conflict of interest in public procurement and what did system does is to automatically check whether participants in a public bid are related to the management of the contractor and the system predicts the the likelihood of a potential conflict of interest through a risk rating for each tender uh every time a potential conflict of interest is detected a warning is automatically issued and brought to the officials uh in question attention so this means that they have to take action to remove the cause of the conflict of interest uh very quickly since it went live three years ago prevent system issued around 124 warnings on of potential conflicts of interest amounting to more than a quarter billion euros and this is my agency budget for the next 100 years uh two are the most important outcomes of this policy to automatic prevent conflict of interest the first one the number of files brought into our attention with consumed conflict of interest in public procurement dropped within the last two years by 52% and the second one there is an inh Hasting accountability of the decision factors when it comes to resolving conflicts of interest since the complain the compliance rate with the prevent system is more than 90% now let me briefly touch the second issue the one related to the asset disclosure so the Romanian asset disclosure system is composed of course besides the disclosure process from a mechanism to detect Integrity incidents and a myriad of sanctions attached to to them so have in mind that within the last decade our investigators handled roughly 30,000 cases out of which uh onethird were cases of conflict of interest unjustified assets incompatibilities or failures to disclose thousands of high level officials members of the parliament local elected officials civil servants police officers were all subject to our investigation and this mechanism led to confiscation of several million euros unjustified increase in assets hundreds of cases where public officials were removed from their offices uh due to incompatibility States for example and also hundreds of them being banned from occupying any other public positions for a certain period of time now if you're asking me what were the drives of this practical enforcement I can tell you that all these started from having comprehensive disclosure forms uh public access to declarations and the wide scope of course and um the system touched all areas of officials with Public Power prerogatives the engine that put into motion this mechanism was a central independent oversight body which is the national Integrity agency that used a series of small and large uh scale instrument both to detect and sanction these uh this incidents so we see after more than a decade of functioning we see some interesting outcomes and let me uh run you through three of them the first one public officials requesting are requesting more than ever uh The Advisory services from our agency you know before taking a new public position or before signing a contract or before filling the assets declaration uh the the public official are approaching the agency the second one journalist and citizens are more empowered than ever in conducting their investigation using the public portal of assets uh declarations and of course our findings last but not least the compliance rate with the disclosure submission and the accuracy of data disclosed significantly increased year after year but of course it's not always about rainbows and butterflies the Romanian system also shows that challenges are still present especially the ones pertaining to legislation and I would be more than glad to touch this subject uh if the time will uh will allow thank you very much thank you Sylvia I think there will be and we encourage the participants we have quite a good turnout at this webinar to think of your questions as our uh speakers reflect on on these issues of V declarations and conflict of interest and you can type them in in the chat box so we'll take as much as possible of course taking the time constraint it's it's fascinating that you made this reference to the solar system I think in a way if you want asset declaration and conflict of interest is also part of the bigger galaxy of the anti-corruption measures and the question is how much they actually uh prevent and open the way to uncover early instances of corruption through to basically save public resources for for much needed uh for much needed policy implementations but now let's move into Georgia who is known in the region uh as one of the leaders of anti-corruption uh reform uh and uh it has accomplished a lot it has soared in many uh ratings of anti-corruption but it has been recently reported in the ACN monitoring report on Georgia that there are risks especially especially related to high level Corruptions and Report recommended uh strengthening the verification mechanism of asset declarations um so how does Georgian Civil Society seize right now uh the performance of the current government I understand it was pretty much re-election and the same government will continue the policy in the future is this government really committed to strengthening this verification mechanisms if not why if yes what are you expected expecting to see eka thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to um this conference and round table and um yes indeed we had uh really uh very successful reforms um uh you may remember that we had in uh in 2003 the rose Revolution and after uh uh this event so the the at that time the ruling party has decided to start part uh very effective anti-corruption reforms and apparently U the reforms that that took place in police in customs and in other such um agencies were really remarkable and really um like well known uh when it comes to the um asset declarations and the system to verify the asset declarations so first of all um from the beginning so we had two stages actually the first stage was when the asset declarations became available online and this was like really very important step forward uh it happened after the rose Revolution and not only the asset declarations but the information related to the state procurement and the company owners and the party Finance uh was also a available online so I would say that it would be impossible to uh to like monitor the the asset declarations without having all these other data also available because um it was needed to check this right so and we needed the data for this um at that time um I would say that the asset declar declarations were uh not in machine read readable format as well so it was uh handwriting but still it was like you know a very important step forward so after this um still the approach of the government at that time was that these um declarations had to be like um um kind of monitored by the media and the Civil Society there was no uh asset declaration like you know official monitoring system so and no one was from the state no one was responsible for monitoring this uh the asset declaration so after that in 2017 so um and that was also very important step forward for Georgia um um the the uh we had we have launched the asset declaration monitoring system um and it was very important but however a number of shortcomings still are currently limiting the systems Effectiveness I would say and so I would like to touch uh this these issues the first of all the monitoring system is focused almost entirely on verification the accur accuracy and um completeness of the data provided in the Declaration so and this is uh inconsistent with the law whereby the monitoring system should also reveal and prevent conflict of interest and Corruption related um offenses so and this was very uh this is very important Point here also a vast majority of the violations um which the Civil Society Bureau which is um now in charge of monitoring the asset declarations um uh so the system has revealed to date U actually only the U the cases where the accuracy and the uh where the problems were related to the accurancy and the completeness of only and so this is like you know what is not correct here and not not in line with the law uh also I should say and bring a little bit of Statistics here is that the um civil Ser servants Bureau verification of a total of 1,347 asset declarations um took place in 2000 in 2017 and in 2019 and they identified only nine cases of potential corruption related offenses that were forwarded to the investigative bodies for further review so and in also in such cases also the Civil Service Bureau does not provide the public with the detailed informations of the essence of the violations and the public um official that committed the the like alleged crime due to this the nature of the violation and the outcome of the forwarding of the case to the investigation bodies uh remain unknown for the public and for for for everyone who was like you know really interested in this case but um meanwhile also if we compare um the monitoring uh data that we have so only 190 in 2019 um 89 declarations were checked um both by the Transparency International Andi civil servants Bureau so in the majority were checked by us and so um in 39 cases the civil Service Bureau did not find any violation so it looks like you know they are they don't really have political will to look at the cases and to uh check the data and to like really make um concrete individuals resp responsible for this so an another uh another problem that we face now here is just the the recent amendments to the law and these amendments actually weaken the responsibility of the cence through the introduction of the concept of a minor violation and amendments to the minimum value uh threshold of assets subject to the Declaration and the decrease in size of monetary F fines so it happened actually right after we had very critical report on the asset Declarations of the MP at that time so and it made them like really very angry because they were criticizing our report during the plenary session as well so and this was the kind of reaction from the side of the uh ruling party that they actually amended the law one additional problem uh related to those amendments was that some of the changes s such as lifting the obligations to declare companies that have not been operational for the last six years so we so what we have now is that in fact in the public um uh uh in the like you know ing to the public information so and the uh special like you know the the publicly available data so these these companies might be not officially abolished but they might be active or not active you know and we couldn't we can't have the information whether these companies are active if they are not abolished ing to the law you know and that's like made our um monitoring system or the monitoring generally like our monitoring like really very complicated also what I wanted to mention is that current system make it impossible for the Civil Society organizations to monitor uh adherence to the revolving door regulations since the relevant information on the postu employ employment of a former public off officials is not published and this is also this makes our life also difficult the data provided in the asset declarations is uh also published in PDF format instead of machine readable format and it's also very difficult for us to analyze this data because of this uh this problem so um also what what happens here is that the government has not yet conducted an assessment of the monitoring systems effective iess despite the this being one of the OCD acn's recommendation and this is also what we are advocating for now so um uh I would say that the biggest Pro problem uh is at this point that no adequate reaction there is no adequate reaction uh on the conflict of interest case from the relevant agencies and um yeah enforcement is a big problem of course uh the media helps us to disseminate the information about the PO potential conflict of interest cases but in spite of this there is no reaction an adequate reaction from the side of the um of the relevant agencies and what I want to say also for instance we have this ethics code just that just was just recently adopted um by the Parliament of Georgia and also from their side in spite of the fact that we have actually the kind of additional um legal framework so still we did not have um any relevant reactions from the side of the relevant like bodies inside of the parliament of course we don't please if you could please wrap up because yeah yeah of course we can't like have the um kind of positive positive expectations because as you said we just had recently the um parliamentary elections and we now have the reality that we will have only one political party in the parliament so in this situation of course it will be um impossible to request such things from the like you know the only one party in the parliament because uh for them it will be even very difficult to form the ethics Council inside of the parliament thank you very much and I'm ready to answer on your questions thanks I think it's it's import important that you stress the um the Paramount relevance of Civil Society in monitoring uh and in using those tools that are developed as part of anti-corruption policy to press government for more accountability and I think the another country in the region that is well known for its strong Civil Society push like in Georgia is of course Ukraine and now I am moving to rouslan where Ukraine has introduced one of the most comprehensive systems for asset declarations I don't know how much Ukraine actually pioneered conflict of interests but perhaps we could focus on asset declaration because it has been recently a lot in the news with a quite uh blunt attack by the Constitutional Court to First declare that this asset declaration system is unconstitutional and the information should not be available to the public I mean this made a lot of international headlines and actually gise Ukraine's cooperation with International Partners but on the 4th of December the parliament has passed a new law in installing back the system of e declarations but with the um lower thresholds of responsibility for uh non-submission or false information and Ruslan can it would be great if you could fill us in into how significant these changes are to uh the system of e declarations how much they will will impede the effectiveness of the system and um why do you think from your perspective there was such a strong attack on the asset declaration system russlan over to you thank you Arisa and I also would like to thanks to oecd for inviting me to to this uh to this event uh first of all Ukrainian Elites they have always considered a declaration system as a threat and it's a very really very powerful instrument in anti corruption the asset declarations becomes like a headache for high level politicians high level uh officials so there are a lot of persons in Ukraine who who would like to to get rid of a declaration system at all in in our country um I remember 2016 and a huge resistance from the political Elites in introducing the asset declaration system and now they choose some some kind of sophisticated method to to to kill the system um so they used constitutional court for that and um thanks to the to the Ukrainian civil society and to the Ukrainian president which who requested an opinion from the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and Venice Commission of the Council of Europe also considered this constitutional Court decision of like um not um uh not fully based on International standards and recommend them to the parliament of Ukraine to reinstate the anticorruption legislation which existed uh before the 27th of October the date of rendering this decision of the Constitutional Court the parliament has made the first step the parliament reated the criminal liability just the issue of criminal liability for the false declaring and nons submitting of e declarations and then the next step should be done is the law on um reinstating the powers of the national agency of corruption prevention should be reinstated and the relevant draft law has already has already been um drafted and submitted to the parliament so we are waiting for the next step from the Ukrainian uh Parliament um what else who who are the beneficiaries of this um bizarre decision of the Constitutional Court first of all as I mentioned there are a lot of politicians and officials who um I would say Happy from the decisions because National anti-corruption Bureau has started a lot it's more than hundred investigations con connected to the false declaring connected to the elist enrichment against high level officials and politicians like members of the parliament ministers for former ministers heads of state owned Enterprises so it's uh it's it becomes a real threat for them uh the next um part of beneficials um those who we call oligarchs because they they are not um they're not trying not to undermind only the asset declaration system but the whole anti-corruption infrastructure they attacks against National anti-corruption Bureau which is investigating now the a lot of cases against oligarchs for example connected to the pr private bank fraud um where one of the most powerful oligarch is uh involved and the third part is the pro Russian MPS who started initiated this proceedings in the Constitutional court and even security and defense Council stated that there is there was external influence they are suspecting such kind of external influence interference in this in this case so there are three different group of um beneficiaries from this uh decision of the Constitutional court but on the other hand um Ukraine has a very powerful uh Civil Society due to Civil Society activity in 2016 the declaration has been established has been invented in Ukraine and now I'm I'm feeling I feel optimistic because of such power from of Civil Society in Ukraine so I hope that the uh asset declaration system will be reinstated in Ukraine and it will be reinst reinstated very soon thank you but ran from your opinion on this modified now law on asset declarations and lower penalties if you want for those who are non declaring and increasing the the the the amount of um assets that has to be declared do you think this will um weaken the system or the system will still be able to perform its function that will definitely weaken the system of preventing the corruption because the sanctions should be um should be dissuasive and should be preventive so even V Commission of Council of Europe they also stressed that there should be um provided an imprisonment for for some aggravated cases of non-s submitting declaration or false declaring that was one of the reasons why civil society and me Al well we are insisting on Ving uh this this law and we demanded from the president of Ukraine to to to use the veto and then to to to redraft the law and to to use also more severe sanctions in the for for nons submitting declaration and false decare okay so this this battle will continue and this is something to watch how Ukraine will calibrate it's never I would say that it's never end in story so we have to be prepared every day for any surprises like this decision from the Constitutional Court okay thank you so much for clarifying that and now I'd like to move to Laura who is really following the development of practices in conflict of interest and asset declarations globally because they are um there are established standards that are they are regulated by the UN convention against corruption and uh it'd be interesting to see what good practices can the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia take away from some other countries around the globe Laura uh thank you arisia uh thank you uh to the oecd uh you know for this uh you know great opportunity to uh to share this panel with um with such esteem experts um and practitioners uh I you know the issue of um um sort of asset declarations around the world um we as a global institutions we think about this practically many times because we're trying to bring good practices you know from uh from uh Eastern Europe or the ACN region to other regions and vice versa uh so we are doing a little bit similar work with the oecd in in um in this respect um and I think about these components of the assd decoration systems as a little bit as like product so to speak you know is it an import product or you know something you want to export and there are some features of AET accretion system in in the ACN um that first of all need to be exported to other parts of the ACN Network as rusudan you know explained in her presentation because the the systems in the ACN Network not homogeneous at all um and then there are you know features that you know you want to uh take to other regions and that's actually something that you know we have done um and we have even brought practitioners from Asian countries to South Asia to Africa to Latin America and there's a great interest in the experience uh from this region in in other parts of the world so I think some of the features that you know I would want to see exported um are uh for example you know when you're looking at the content of asset declarations and this is something that was touched upon in rusan's presentation as well is this comprehensiveness um and having you know both comprehensiveness and sort of targeted um requirements for disclosures so including you know beneficial ownership so Declaration of assets that are owned by officials and their family members as beneficial owners assets that are not just registered in their names this is something that you know um there are countries in the ACN regions that have pioneered so to speak and you know it would be great to see this more um there's also um you know the use of use of electronic tools I mean we have heard from different panelists you know um the ACN has really been at the Forefront of this um you know electronic filing but also now more and more um electronic verification so you know more specifically um using automatic um uh checks um you know to identify highrisk declarations so that you know you don't do just the formalistic checks of Declaration just because they were filed late or you know something like you know other similar formalistic approaches to verification um and I think this has really the power to be transformative um you know in terms of the effectiveness of Declaration so you know definitely there's um you know there's a lot to to look forward to then there's the issue of um information or um information that can be accessed in the process of verification um there are you know some countries in in uh the ACN Network where asset declaration agencies can you know access tax information um or you know information from uh financial institutions and this is something that is not you know sort of the case all over the world and even within the ASN Network um the other you know another sort of um um when it comes to Public Access um the I think some Asian countries have shown that you can strike um a balance between um having very comprehensive Public Access but also you know resp making sure that there aren't you know serious threats to the security um and the privacy of public officials um and that is something that you know that message even you know brought by practitioners from the region has been very powerful in other parts of the world where there is a lot of apprehension when it when uh when it comes to seeing uh very uh broad Public Access and the fact is that you know when it comes to this issue it's really good to see you know it's one thing to talk about it theoretically um and speculate over what might happen and what are the risks but you know you see a number of countries where you know there's comprehensive Public Access there are mitigation and you know controls that are put in place and things you know have worked out uh you know quite quite well um and then there's also you know just in terms of sort of a a very positive development is also something that we have heard from some from Sil viw in in Romania the use of Technology but also for identifying potential conflicts of interest but more but more generally thinking not only about sanctioning and punishing public officials but also working with them to identify potential conflicts of interest to advise them um because not you know not everyone has you know bad intentions so to speak so that is you know something and and this also brings me to you know what um you know could be imported more in uh in the region and I think that is one of the things that you know know needs to be given more attention and you know there's also something that you see more in O oecd countries this whole more um sort of support system for conflict of interest that is appears throughout the public sector because right now what we see in the Asian countries is that mostly responsibilities related to conflict of interest are more or less on the shoulders of the specialized um agencies and that is not enough so seeing for example that before you have public officials that you know start their you know public service that there is a review of their uh declarations for identifying potential conflicts of interest and resolving them even before they come into you know they start their mandate so that would be you know that would be very powerful and I think the logic is similar to what we have heard on procurement that you want to solve the problems before they you know they turn into to regulations or contracts or things that are much harder to to to reverse so I will stop here and I'm looking forward to the discussion thank you very much Laura it's a very interesting list and and I think it's uh it makes uh uh I'm sure a lot of people in our um webinar uh think about some of these best practices and being a bit proud for the region as well because you know it's uh it's important to celebrate the achievements it's a very difficult F fight against the entrenched system so thank you very much for bringing you know a certain pride in what the Eastern Europe and Central Asia can can uh bring to the world but also I think it's important point about the more convergent across the region if possible but of course the political system differs so much if you just take this very region you know when you think from Romania from Romania to kyrgistan there's there's quite a there's quite a difference in in political culture as well but last but but not least I would like to bring jiron and kind of Zoom back into the oecd region of uh you know welldeveloped uh well-governed countries and to and to learn uh from your perspective whether you see what is happening in ACN countries is more of a convergence with what is uh what are the practices of the oecd countries or do you see some kind of special model emergence emerging uh compared to um to cor or see Jon over to you all right thanks a lot and I mean first of all I'm very honored to be part of this panel discussion today and I want to start with complimenting the colleagues from the ACN Secretariat with the launch of this excellent report so please everyone uh download it read it it has very useful information and I would like to connect indeed the the findings of the report and also the the the key messages from from the discussion and the inspiring examples with what we see in in oecd countries um and I mean some of the the things are a bit repetition but um I would like to add some some examples also from OCD countries to to to bring that perspective so first of all I will not use the Galaxy metaphors but uh indeed asset declaration should be embedded in in a broader approach for managing conflict of interest in in curbing elicit enrichment uh taking into account risk areas such as pre and post employment lobbying linkages to beneficial ownership regulations Etc and there a good example maybe is is the high Authority for transparency in public life of France uh which is the agency responsible for ensuring effective uh auditing of asset and interest interest declarations but also uh monitoring uh postp public employment Provisions uh and also uh the agency is is dealing with the implementation of the of the lobbying regulation so I think it's it's important to to participate in in this perspective the broader perspective of of managing conflict of interest more broadly then the second uh I mean building on the examples again uh from from the ACN uh region the use of technology and digitalization uh both for submission of asset declarations and for data verification so so the use of Technology can really contribute to reducing the human error and can can render the whole process um much more efficient um and also facilitate then public ass public access to asset declaration information I mean there many examples from Mexico there is the declar declaran net uh platform um which not only allows Mexican Federal public officials to declare their assets but also the publication page allows um the public to to search by name and and and cross check the the information there um then moving back to France um the the high Authority has designed a specific software uh solution for the management of of the Declarations that are submitted online it's called ulis Uh and and there's another software that is compatible to that and that's maybe quite Innovative uh media monitoring software so basically our Tami software is called it it checks the information that is public L available on the internet in open sources against the asset and interest Declarations of um of public officials and and a last example there maybe from Korea the Korean uh platform is called public ethics and transparency initiative uh this is integrated with u other databases from from the government with uh financial information with the registers on property the registers on vehicles um some Bank databases with financial information so so that allows the the data um to be cross checked almost in real time so this is an example I would like to share with you um then third moving more into the the auditing of asset declarations well one aspect has been touched upon already is the regulatory framework and the mandate to obtain information from tax authorities from other public instit Solutions and there again we can look at at France um where uh the high Authority has indeed the the mandate to uh to obtain information from all other uh public but also from Individual persons needed uh in the auditing process of uh of the asset declarations um and then indeed a very promising Trend that we see is the the use of technology in the detection of uh of of outliers irregularities through data analytics so it's special software detecting unusual patterns and this then these red flags should then lead to of course a more detailed audit um so I will stop here um and happy to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you very much we have some questions coming in coming in in the chat so we would like to invite also other particip ipants to um to express your views and also ask question if you have uh your question directed to a particular uh speaker you can you can write it as such but otherwise I will be Distributing them at at my discretion and I would like to take a question that came from Sergio Sid I imagine from Georgia uh and I would like to address it to Sylvio s Sero is asking uh with regards to uh determining the circle of family members who should be included in the Declaration for the official person um uh for government officials and how wide or narrow the circle should be for example should family members who do not live in the same household be included Sylvia what is the best practice in in this regards so thank you for the question it's uh very pinpoint question and let me tell you that um usually in most of the constituencies all over the world the family acts the family composed from spouses and maybe the dependent uh children uh acts as a household meaning that they pull incomes and expenses together so this is important to the extent of the fact that when a central oversight side body will be in charge of conducting a full audit on the uh unjustified assets for example uh they will look uh not only on the assets and incomes produced by the declarant but also the expenses uh and the incomes produced by his spouse or her spouse and by their dependent children so I think the level of detail uh must be linked with the family members the family members that live in the same in the same household uh if you if we are thinking about the parents I don't think um um assets disclosure form should include the same level of detail as in the case of the spouses uh of course transa transactions and um gifts from parents or for other members of the family family should be reflected um in in other section of the Declaration but the practice is that is much comfortable for the declarant because uh it needs a lot of time to when uh he's due to fill in declaration uh and also for the oversight body to check this information to be more efficient I think it should be limited only to the family members thank you but maybe we'll bring in the Rous Sudan who will ref reflect how this um will be measured in these performance indicators that you've presented at the beginning what would be the requirement there well in fact the answer to this question is pretty brief uh rationale here is that unless we bring in the family members in the asset declarations there are risks that asset declaration systems may be ineffective because assets and interest may be acquired in the name of the family member but will not be disclosed in the in the form for public scrutiny so uh for us uh in the performance indicators we're using the concept of uh household Family household and we have at least spouse and members of the family that live in the same household um that is a really short answer to this oh okay thank you so much and um there there's also a question related to the balance of information that is available to the public and that is uh only available to the anti-corruption prevention agencies so perhaps I'll invite Ruslan Anda from Georgian and Ukrainian experience from after having these systems in place do you see first of all what is the balance is all information available to public anybody can go and check and do you think it's the right balance that Ukraine and Georgia strike in this regards maybe we'll start with eeka and then go to rlan so I think that um uh when it comes to the public official right so it's it's really very important to ensure their transparency um and the information about their income should be like available it is very important to do this and also about the like you know the assets of their like family members right so um because otherwise how would like Ure the the transparency right like you know it would be impossible and from the moment they become the public servants they should take the responsibility and be as transparent as possible this is uh this is my answer to this question of course um there might be some personal information but we are not talking about the personal information here ing to our law so it's like really the information that that is needed in order to to uh to make their sure that they are acting transparently and also to make sure that uh the monitoring of their assets uh is effective thanks eka I mean in the report ladies and gentlemen if you go you will see on page 95 quite detailed text box of all the information that Ukrainian asset declaration demands and it includes gifts and income and financial liabilities to quite quite detail so rouslan do you think it was the right design of that system and maybe perhaps because we do know how especially in Ukraine government officials are skilled in hiding their assets through their keen and extended family um what was the practice and what have you seen in Ukraine with regards to family members so maybe you can reflect on these two uh points first I would like to start with the previous question and to note that the introducing of us declaration system in Ukraine it leads lead to to increasing the number of divorces in Ukraine among the top politicians and officials but it frankly it doesn't help because of the activ it's quite easy to trace the like Sy says uh quite easy to to trace this common Spence or common um common travels for example so it's uh it's not um it's not a problematic issue for anti-corruption Bureau or anti-corruption agency to establish the fact of of having a household and and all the consequences um what is happening now with the assd Declarations in Ukraine you also agree that the Ukrainian example Ukrainian a DEC declaration is very very detailed and we demand a lot of information to be submitted at the same time officials and politicians subject of for declaring they are also very sophisticated so it's like a competition between us between anti corruption infrastructure and between officials they are trying to hide the assets and the anticorruption B they are learning how to to find them so there is like a common patterns on how to find to hide the assets and the common um experience from anticorruption bodies how to how to find them as the issue of The Institute of beneficial owners is um is very helpful for the anti-corruption bodies so it's uh um it helps a lot in terms of identifying the real owners and the identifying the assets that could be hidden from the declar in asset declarations and while it's also sorry it's also like a Never Ending Story so it's a continuing comp competitions and it means that you should anti-corruption body should be always to be prepared for for new inventions in in anti-corruption methods and while I have you rlan here because we we staying on the family on the family issue here has the question with regards to H siblings and adult childrens the participant says often a brother or a sister or an adult child holds questionable assets and acts on behalf of the officials you cannot divorce your children or siblings are they are they to be included in Ukraine on declarations if they are living together with the subject of Declaration they they have to to be included into the into the Declaration and if they um if they are not living with together they should use another Institute of beneficial owners if they act on behalf of the official or politician they also should be declared this information should be incl put into the a declaration and and maybe um I'll I'll turn into Laura because she has a real global view how much of this um um Family Circle is really a problem and how much it's used as a practice to disguise some of the illegal assets is this really an area where uh anti-corruption uh agencies and also anti-corruption activists should focus to ensure that this is covered in the regulation yes absolutely that is one of the key uh key issues in an asset declaration system I mean you know your coverage of family members and because of you know what what has been mentioned before uh you know by including by rustan is that ultimately you know you cannot really so there the basic rule is you cover the members of the household and you know the spouse um and the CH the minor children um but then going beyond that the only instrument that can help is the beneficial ownership because there have been attempts in other countries to include siblings and aunts and grandparents but that is just too honorous because you cannot you know expect public officials in good faith to know about all of the interest and assets of all of their you know extended family members so that is really the you know the the the the option that is used but what we see in other countries is that you have countries now in the world where you know you uh only public officials have to declare their assets not even their spouses or minor children and in those cases you know you're going to have a problem um you know as as we have uh heard a lot and then in some um systems there's also the question you know do you go beyond you know do you go even in terms of when you're taking the is the concept of household you know even covering domestic partners and then how what is the rule to determine that you know um a person should be covered by the requirement or or not radan would you like to add another point oh sure yes uh regarding the family members I guess because we are still talking about this well the key is that each country determines their own uh Circle of who is included as a family member depending on the country context and the imagination Co can go too far such as for example we can have the situations of mothers and fathers-in-law being the uh you know formal owners of the assets and interests uh uh but again uh the minimum requirement coupled with the beneficial information disclosure should be enough I think and Ruslan I think wanted to yeah go ahead if I may yes from my uh from my experience as a prosecutor General I would say that uh using family members for hiding assets is quite primitive uh very simple way to to hide or disguise the the assets um more sophisticated issue is uh establishing a change chain of legal persons particularly established in some some way in offshore so it's in this case it's much much more complicated to find uh the final beneficial owners and to find assets real assets so I would emphasize that anti-corruption bodies should not like follow very much for on uh after the members of the family members but to to to to draw their attention on finding the final beneficial owners uh thank you very much um we only have 10 minutes left even less than and maybe it would be interesting for all of us and for our participants to look a little bit forward into the next year because of course we focus today on AA declarations and conflict of interest but we all know that the region faces the challenge of high level corruption and maybe if we go around the table in the opposite order that we were starting from the very beginning if you were to identify I understand there's no Silver Bullet but something that knowing where the region is right now in its um ecosystem of fighting corruption where would you like to see more Focus next year uh and where should uh organizations like oecd in particularly uh invest their attention so jiron and then we'll go to Laura um yeah I thi