News date: 21 October 2016
The attorneys of Ilyashev & Partners Law Firm held a workshop “E-declaration of income of public servants” for journalists. Managing partner Mikhail Ilyashev and lawyer Galyna Melnyk made reports on the most relevant questions put by the journalists about the new form of e-declaration, ensuring operation of e-declaration system, information exchange between government agencies and responsibility for the accuracy of income data.
The questions of legitimacy of e-declarations were considered. The attorneys of Ilyashev & Partners Law Firm also spoke on the aspects of bringing the public servants to responsibility for inconsistency of the income and the assets declared.
Galyna Melnyk drew attention to the shortcomings of the new declaration, in particular, to methodological gaps in the structure of the declaration both in terms of the Law “On Prevention of Corruption” and clarification of the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption to filling of E-declaration. “Some data are recorded simultaneously in 2-3 sections of the declaration. Due to lack of detailed description of some declared objects it can result in confusion and incorrect conclusions that there are two different objects of declaration, while in fact it is one and the same object”, said Galyna Melnyk.
Mikhail Ilyashev explained consistency of cost control instruments and bringing the declarant to administrative and criminal liability, and possible sanctions against public servants for submitting deliberately false information in respect of the objects of declaration. Mikhail Ilyashev pointed that costs and deals of the declarant’s family members are excluded from the scope of declaration, while their income and assets are taken into account in the declaration. “Whereas the Law does not specify whether the monetary assets, income, financial liabilities of family members of the declarant should be declared, it can be used for avoiding criminal liability”, he explained.
The workshop was attended by 15 journalists from Forbes, Zerkalo Nedeli, UNIAN News Agency, Ukrainian News Agency, UBR, Pershyi Natsionalnyi and other media. After the workshop all journalists received memos with analysis of the legislation.