Transparency-Serbia submits amendments to anti-corruption laws

On Friday, the organisation Transparency-Serbia sent an initiative to parliamentary groups in the National Assembly formulated as amendments to two acts currently in procedure before the Legislative, the Law on the Anti-corruption Agency and the Law on Changes and Amendments to the Law on the Financing of Political Parties.

If deputies support this initiative, the method how the head of the Anti-corruption Agency is chosen would be simplified and any delay in the establishment process because of Parliament’s occupation or absence of political agreement avoided. By our prepositions, the agency would have wider authority in supervision over the implementation of the national anti-corruption strategy; limitations for officials having different jobs at the same time and performing other functions during their mandate would be defined more clearly; and finally the amount of data delivered in reports on property would be increased.

We also emphasize that through our amendments the authorisation of the agency to verify data in official reports is widened and made more precise. Also, there would be a bigger scope of criminal offences for non-reporting of property and reporting false data, as well as suggested changes to the transitional provisions in the law in order to prevent the expiring of validity of the Law on Preventing Conflict of Interest before the Agency receives all necessary conditions for its functioning.

Amendments to Law on Financing of Political Parties, which we sent to deputies, are of limited nature. For formal reasons, only the norms which are included in the Government’s preposition of amendments can be influenced. However we consider that regardless of the stated limitation, the amendments submitted by Transparency-Serbia could be useful as the authorisation of the Agency in the procedure of controlling the financial reports of parties is more clearly defined and prescribes precise deadlines for submitting annual reports that do not exist currently.