Public officials' cash laundering rejected

This assessment is expected to raise the issue of concerns by senior officials to close the public's cash declaration.

But this statement has been strongly opposed by nongovernmental organisations.

According to them, this proposal should not be made on the part of the AKK, as these data serve the public to control the unbased enrichment of public officials.

According to Havol, this issue will be addressed to the processing group, which is dealing with drafting the new Law, and then the group decides whether it will be introduced or removed from the Law.

“At the moment about 70 percent of the draft work has been carried out, within the Ministry of Justice, this law is also within the framework of the package against corruption”, Havolli said.

The issue Havol has raised on the Commission for Business and Finance on Wednesday, during the presentation of the annual financial report for 2017, was the issue of concerns of senior officials seeking to leave online publication the issue of cash.

According to Havol, officials accuse the AKK of risking them from publishing these data, so this concern will also be addressed to the working group that is working on drafting the new Law.

There are concerns that they say should close the wealth declaration, don't get the online public on account of the threat of life. They're saying how they look at money, comes brother, sister, friendship and ask for it. It's because they say we're fighting. In some form they're accusing us of”, Havolly said of KALLXO.com.

Havol said that “all these concerns are presented to the working group and we say that during law enforcement we have had these concerns on the part of senior officials and present as problems”.

The working group, according to him, is made up of about 20 people who give their opinions each. He said he has international, local experts, U n The NDP, the Council of Europe, the EU Office, various experts and will later come to public discussion in civil society and the media.

This is in the phase of ideas and problems that have been encountered during implementation. It hasn't been decided that way yet. The law is in fulfillment and change does not yet have a final version”, Havolli said, adding that the agency he runs at any cost tends to keep this point of the Law as it is, but according to him, the Law is done because of the implementation and problems that arise on the ground.

But, according to nongovernmental organisations monitoring possible corruption of institutions and public officials, this proposal would not have to be made on the part of the AKK, as these data serve the public to control public enrichment without the basis of public officials.

Florent Spahija, the legal adviser in KDI, told KALLXO.com that such statements especially by the AKK are contrary to all their activity and that it is the property declaration.

According to him, it makes no sense to call for shutting down some of the property for senior officials with such reasoning.

The first and general “that we should keep in mind in any case is that they are senior officials and paid on our taxes. As a result, the public's interest is to know how and how much these people have. Their problem with families is very easily solved and should not be our problem as citizens of this country”, Spahija said.

Also, according to him, the AKK should see to it that the control of property statements is stricter and the findings are as large as possible and the best evidence sent to the prosecutor when there are cases of quick and unborn enrichment.

E Isuf Zeynep from Democracy Plus said this statement is ridiculous since the idea of declaring property is not just to serve the Agency in eventual investigations.

According to him, if an official has agreed to take public office then he has agreed to give up some of his privacy.

This is more of a service to the public, corruption registry monitoring organisations. So public officials who decide by taking public office they automatically accept part of their privacy. In this case it's a statement of '%s', a statement of assets and I think there's no reason that this was changed by law or practice of implementing it”, Zeynep said.

Zeynep added that if public officials do not want their property to be published then they should give up public posts. But, according to him, it should not be for the public sector to give up transparency because of officials.

Public interest must always exceed that individual of some officials. Our interest as public, voters, organisations, is much greater by days than that public officials have money than their interest in not telling their families because they are endangered by debt claims or something like that”, Zeynep added.

According to him, the AKK needs to expand with several other officials who must declare the property.

This should be done by a risk analysis such as procurement officials in all public institutions should be involved and we should know that if these officials are eventually enriched without basis. The other should also become an electronic platform of property declaration, which would not allow public officials to make exceeded in providing”, he added.

Meanwhile, the director of the Anti-Corruption Agency has said that this Law will regulate the issue about property statements, as well as that it is planned to remove some officials who are less exposed to corruption and introduce other officials for whom it is estimated to be exposed to corruption.

What I discussed on the commission is one of the possible points. Those are discussions, the working group decides whether to step in or off. There are problems with the cash issue”, Shaip Havoli stressed.