site.btaSingle National Corruption Prevention Office to Do Away with Ostentatious Checks

Single National Corruption Prevention Office to Do Away with Ostentatious Checks

Sofia, May 27 (BTA) - A future National Corruption Prevention
Office (NCPO), which will become operational in 2016 as a single
anti-corruption authority in Bulgaria, will conduct proper
checks of public officials' declarations on financial interests
and conflict of interest, which means that there will be no more
ostentatious checks, Deputy Prime Minister for European Policy
and Institutional Affairs Meglena Kuneva said on May 26, as
quoted by the press office of the Reformist Bloc. Kuneva was
speaking during a meeting with the parliamentary groups of the
Reformist Bloc and GERB.

The law establishing NCPO should be approved before the upcoming
summer recess of Parliament so that there will be enough time
to recruit its staff and raise the funding. NCPO is intended as
a single national anti-corruption body which will be formed by
the merger of the Conflict of Interest Commission, the
directorate in the National Audit Office which handles financial
interests declarations, and the Council of Ministers' BORKOR
centre. Besides that, two relevant laws will be combined into
one.

NCPO will be headed by a director who will be designated by the
Council of Ministers and appointed by the President. It will
have the right to ask the courts to lift the bank secrecy rule,
seek assistance from the Interior Ministry and the State Agency
for National Security, hear out persons who are being
investigated, and impose fines for failure to provide
information or failure to appear before the Office.

The Illegal Assets Forfeiture Commission (IAFC) has confiscated
26 million leva in assets in two years, Kuneva said, presenting
an anti-corruption bill to the two parliamentary groups. She
noted that the bill fulfills the European Commission's
recommendation to set up a single anti-corruption authority in
Bulgaria.

The future law will apply to senior public officials, whose
scope will be expanded to include municipal councillors, chief
architects of administrative units, customs chiefs, leaders of
managing authorities of EU-backed Operational Programmes and
relevant intermediary units, directors of state-run hospitals,
and administrators playing an important role in public
procurement procedures.

In addition to enlarging the scope of senior public officials
who are subject to this law, the bill also seeks to expand the
scope of circumstances which such officials must declare to the
authorities. These circumstances will include the person's
earnings, bank loan repayment records (in order to see if a loan
is repaid too quickly), other people's assets used by the
person which are worth more than 5,000 leva, and travel and
study expenses exceeding 5,000 leva. As before, a financial
interests declaration must disclose the financial interests of
the public official concerned, their spouse and any children
under 18 years of age. This group of people will now be expanded
to include the person's cohabiting partner if there is one.

NCPO will conduct two types of checks, Kuneva said. First, it
will investigate all declarations submitted by senior public
officials, which means checking between 10,000 and 15,000 people
(including magistrates) serving in the upper echelons of power.
Second, the Office will conduct thorough checks into the assets
of people if the difference between the actual assets and those
which have been declared exceeds 10,000 leva, or if the Office
has received an alert.

If a check finds inexplicable wealth, NCPO will alert IAFC. If
it finds discrepancies between a declaration and the actual
facts, the matter will be referred to the National Revenue
Agency, Kuneva said. The State Agency for National Security will
be asked to investigate income sources. If there is evidence of
offence, the case will be referred to the prosecution.

NCPO will also act upon anonymous alerts and media reports if
they contain enough evidence about inexplicable wealth or
corrupt conduct, Kuneva said.