WAR ON CORRUPTION BEGINS

Caspian Business News, 19 January 2004

By Gulnaz Guliyeva

BAKU, Azerbaijan - Fulfillment of the obligations undertaken by Azerbaijan upon joining the Council of Europe (CE) has taken a long time. Last week, the authorities satisfied one more obligation, this one related to anti-corruption legislation.

Milli Mejlis, the parliament of Azerbaijan, adopted an anti-corruption law consisting of four sections and 14 articles. On the eve of Azerbaijan's entrance into the Council of Europe in January 2001, the country undertook to draw up a state program to fight against corruption, adopt anti-corruption laws and join international conventions. In June 2000, former-president of the country Heydar Aliyev signed a decree directing the government to design drafts of a national anti-corruption program and anti-corruption law within 6 months.

Despite the fact that the anti-corruption bill was approved by Milli Mejlis in the first reading two years ago, its final adoption has just been accomplished. According to Turan news agency, after the second reading, a number of minor corrections were made to the bill that did not influence the essence of the document on the whole.

MP Jamil Hasanli [from the People's Front of Azerbaijan Party] slammed the approval of the law without amendments after the second reading. Hasanli does not agree with the wording of the corruption bill, which lacks the notion of bribery. The MP believes that a more perfect definition of corruption is given in the Council of Europe's Civil Law Convention on Corruption.

On January 12, 2003 the monitoring group of the Parliamentarian Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) released the report "Functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan". According to the document, the Civil Law Convention on Corruption and the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption were ratified by the parliament on 30 December, 2003.

"Adoption of the law is a positive step anyway. It is one of the obligations of the country adopted before admission to the Council of Europe, though we are late," Rena Safaraliyeva, executive director of Transparency Azerbaijan (TA), told CBN and noted that the law should have been adopted in Jan 2002. "In regard to the state anti-corruption program, the publicans not received any information so far. Unfortunately, that is because the national program has not been adopted so far, though the deadline for it was January 2003," she said- "Both documents should be drawn up with the participation of independent experts

and non-governmental organizations." However, in reality, non-governmental organizations received trie opportunity to get acquainted with the law only after its adoption. That's why most experts in this area have difficulties expressing their views on the law.

The last resolution of PACE recognized that "Azerbaijan has made certain progress towards honoring obligations and commitments since the last monitoring report in September 2002, but this progress is far from satisfactory, particularly with regard to the implementation of new laws."

According to the leader of the People's Front of Azerbaijan Party, Ali Kerimli, "Elimination of corruption in Azerbaijan will only become possible when democratization of the society will indeed be started and the hiring of officials will be on a competitive basis, and the courts will have to be independent as well."

During discussions of the bill in the Milli Mejlis, Ali Huseynov, head of the Parliamentarian Commission on Legal Policy and Statehood Building, presented the bill and stated: "According to our view, the law should show the will of Azerbaijan to struggle against corruption." He noted that European experts gave a positive estimation to the bill.

"This law will be a step forward in the anti-corruption struggle, and, if it is implemented correctly, it will be able to change the situation," said Sayad Kerimov, deputy head of administrative and military law department of Milli Mejlis and noted that all suggestions of European experts were taken into account while drawing up the bill.

Safaraliyeva believed that the law should improve the international image of the country. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index the individual score of Azerbaijan on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 meaning that the country is completely overrun by corruption with 10 being absolutely free of corruption) is as follows: 2000 - 1.5; 2001 - 2.0; 2002 -2.0; 2003 -1.8.

"The dynamics above show us that the image of the country improved after President Aliyev signed the declaration in June 2000 and decreased again when no actual steps were taken. As we see, this decree was only partially implemented and then only with great delay," Safaraliyeva stated and pointed out that the law itself would not alone solve the problem of corruption and that the country needed to design mechanisms for the implementation of the law.

"Still, without the law, it is impossible to effectively reduce corruption. So, adoption of this law gives the authorities advance credit, which must be justified by creating efficient and controlled mechanisms for the law's implementation," she emphasized.

According to the law, the war against corruption will be performed through an Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) under the Council on Regulation of Public Service* while all high-ranking public officials shall combat corruption within their jurisdictions. The Commission will comprise representatives of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Safaraliyeva believes that the Commission should have been independent and include representatives of media and civil society. She expressed hopes that some prohibitions instituted by the law will help in combating corruption. A gift of over 50 conventional financial units (275,000 manat -$55) is considered not to belong to the individual but to the agency. Also, the law prohibits public officials from appointing their relatives.

According to the law, officials have to submit information about their property and bank savings, as well as the amount of any other sources of income to the ACC yearly. Safaraliyeva stated, "This law will create legal collisions with other legal instruments of the country and will require adoption of amendments and changes to some other laws." The law on public service passed on July 21, 2002, envisions submission of tax returns by high ranking public officials to the heads of their agencies, while Article 5.1 of the anti-corruption law requires submission of information on their incomes, property, securities and other valuables, in addition to information about participation in companies, foundations and other economic units to the Commission. "The anti-corruption law does not use the term "tax return" and says nothing about the general public being able to see this information," stressed Safaraliyeva, in its own resolution, PACE stated: "The co-reporters quite understand that a country, which has known centuries of absolutism and 70 years of communism, needs time before it can attain the same degree of democratic standards as other Council of Europe member countries, which have taken a century to do so. They are conscious of certain improvements and progress, but regret they have not reached the desirable standards." As mentioned in the Resolution of 2002, "Honoring of commitments not only implies formal reform of the legal framework, but also the respect and effective implementation of the legislation in the daily life of the people."

As mentioned in the Resolution of 2002, "Honoring of commitments not only implies formal reform of the legal framework, but also the respect and effective implementation of the legislation in the daily life of the people."

The bill will take effect on 1 January, 2005. Huseynov said that in 2004, it would be necessary to prepare for declaring income, as well as to develop and adopt regulations and choose personnel for the anti-corruption commission.