The irresistible force of corruption

The Ministry of Justice offers not to punish officials if they “took” the force majeure

The Ministry of Justice made the initiative to mitigate the legislation on countering corruption: it is proposed to amends that a violation of anti -corruption laws “due to force majeure is not an offense”. Information about this appeared on the website of the portal of draft legal acts. The report on amendments to the Federal Law “On Combating Corruption”, submitted to the government, is at the stage of public discussion: until February 8, you can send your proposals through the form on the site.

News about the initiative of the Ministry of Justice are actively discussed on social networks - the liberalization of legislation regarding officials did not cause special support for the public. The vague of the formulations in the draft amendments is also discussed: nowhere is it specified what exactly the “circumstances of force majeure” and the “objective reasons” are, by virtue of which corruption should be decriminalized.

Translation from the language of officials, as Vedomosti writes, the Ministry will publish after the completion of the stage of public discussions, that is, not earlier than February 9th. But lawyers have already noted the inefficiency of messages for officials in the framework of the struggle to reduce the level of corruption in the authorities.

It will not work to explain the legislative initiative to European experience either. In the international practice, there are no similar regulatory acts, says Ilya Shumanov, a former member of the Kaliningrad Regional Anti -Corruption Community of Experts and Deputy General Director of Transpensers International - Russia.

The deputy chairman of the Constitutional Constitutional Legislation Committee, Alexander Bashkin, in a conversation with the Daily Storm, said that, for unforeseen circumstances,, for example, incorrectly completed declarations of income and property of an official. If the husband or spouse of the official was incorrectly filled out the declaration, then there should not be responsibility for such a mistake, the senator believes. He explains this by the fact that the spouses do not always "find themselves aware of all the affairs of their second halves."

““ Circumstances of force majeure ”are a certain category of emergency situations that cannot be foreseen and cannot be opposed,” Ilya Shumanov explains.

- natural disasters, military [situations], popular unrest. This is not particularly knitting with the need to declare its income, property or report a conflict of interests.

Elena Lukyanova, a professor at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law of the Faculty of Law of Economics, believes that such initiatives are not at all in the competence of the Ministry of Justice, and the court should decide whether the official filled the official’s income correctly: exclusively the court:

- I can say very briefly: this is not a question of the Ministry of Justice, this is a matter of court. The judge has the right to find out why a person did not give something there. This is called excessive state regulation.

In addition to the stage of public discussion, the bill should go through an anti -corruption examination, but its conclusions are not mandatory, but a recommendatory nature. Schumanov himself was an anti -corruption expert and sent conclusions as part of an anti -corruption examination: “authorities ignore these independent conclusions, since they have no obligations to take them into account. Therefore, they are based on their own position, on the decisions of other officials from other authorities, who are not averse to creating another hole in the legislation. ”

The corruption “hole”, which will open, if the amendments are adopted, is contrary to the trend for demonstration processes among officials of different levels. Moreover, in the register of persons dismissed in connection with the loss of trust (that is, for bribes), as of January 2019, only 799 people are located.

“The final decision remains with the commissions on the ethics and settlement of conflicts of interests that will consider the statements of officials and decide how“ the circumstances of force majeure were there, ”the expert concludes. - And all the decisions of these ethics commissions, judging by the study of Transparency International, are non -public and opaque: there is often no information on the activities of these commissions on the website of the authorities. Decisions on the presence of these circumstances will be applied to voluntarist officials, opaquely.

"Enormalities, nor public organizations, nor citizens will receive access to information."

The New Gazeta sent a request to the Ministry of Justice to clarify the circumstances in which corruption should not be persecuted by law. In his response, the Ministry of Justice only notified that “about the non -compliance of the prohibitions, restrictions and requirements established in order to counteract corruption, due to force majeure circumstances, will not be an offense, we will inform the notifications according to the results of their public discussion of proposals.”