Arseniy Yatsenyuk appealed to Parliament to approve a package of anti-corruption bills submitted by Government and President

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk hopes on October 7 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will approve a package of anti-corruption draft laws: the governmental draft laws on the mandatory publication of data about real owners of companies and those of immovable property, as well as on curbing corruption, and the presidential bill on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. The Head of Government said at the session of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on Monday, October 6.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk has reminded that the Government of Ukraine addressed the VR Speaker with a request to hold an extraordinary session of the Parliament to back a package of anticorruption laws, and this meeting will take place on 7 October. "Together with the President, we discussed issues of voting for a package of laws to combat corruption," he added.

The Prime Minister emphasized that the Cabinet of Ministers has a clear plan “of how to curb corruption in Ukraine and what steps to make”. This plan, according to him, consists of three blocks, the first of which is deregulation, "If officials have too much powers and they aren’t overseen, they just start to collect money for their powers, the state authorized them with".

Hence, the PM has stressed, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has already taken a series of vital decisions regarding deregulation, “and, respectively, reduction of corruption in public authorities”. In particular, the first Government’s solution is to reduce the number of public authorities with control functions from 56 to 27, to cut the number of functions from 1100 functions to 680 and put the limit to inspections, “Two months ago, the Government, on receiving approval by the Parliament, adopted a decision prohibiting to carry out inspections of business entities by the end of the year. With exception of the State Fiscal Service, which didn’t come under this law”.

The second block of anti-corruption initiatives the Government insists on include “two bills that are presented by the Cabinet of Ministers and are called to significantly prevent the situation when corrupt officials are at power, to reveal them”.

The bill On the determination of final profit recipients being legal entities and public figures obliges any business entity - companies, joint stock companies, limited liability companies - to disclose information about real owners of the company, “Today, companies are registered in the offshore zones, and the actual owners of the companies can appear either civil servants, members of the Government or employees of the Administration of the President, and it is impossible to see. Therefore, the primary task of this law is to disclose data about all beneficial owners of any Ukrainian company”.

Another novelty of this law, according to the Head of the Government, “is after approval of this law, any Ukrainian citizen will receive access to the information about the owners of all immovable property in Ukraine”, “We’ll see who has what houses, flats, property and get real access to all databases of all properties in the country”.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk urged on parliamentarians to support this bill, “I hope that members of the Parliament have nothing to fear about disclosing information about owners of the companies and disclosing of information about real estate and other property”.

One more draft law of the Cabinet of Ministers is On curbing corruption. Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called it an anti-corruption code and informed the bill was designed in synergy with the western partners, notably from the U.S.A., “We were engaged into finalizing it for several times and now, after receiving the Government’s decision, the final redaction will be sent for consideration to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine”.

“The Law "On combating corruption" should focus not on petty officials, but officials of I-III categories. It means starting with the members of the Government, the Administration of the President, Ministers, and ending with CEA leaders, heads of local administrations,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk explained.

According to him, the law would provide for the introduction of mandatory e-Declaration of incomes and expenditures of all public officials of 1-3 categories, "Anyone can get access to this electronic Declaration".

In addition, the list of assets being the subject to Declaration is to be enlarged, "In particular, jewels and metals, and foreign currency, and cash will be declared – the information not contained in the current Declaration form”.

The abovementioned bill also introduce a procedure of monitoring life of high-rank officials, “A special national commission will be authorized on the verification of declarations of high-ranking officials to obtain information from other sources, whether what is written in the Declaration corresponds to the lifestyle of one or another high official they lead in high offices”.

“While elaboration of this bill we studied the advanced experience, and this law, like the Law on the disclosure of information related to owners and real estate, should be a substantive step in real battle against corruption. Transparency and access to information, reports, verification of reports,” the Head of Government stressed.

The Governmental draft law envisages considerably higher responsibility for acts of corruption.

The PM reminded that the following day the Verkhovna Rada would consider a presidential bill on establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, “We hope that the entire package of laws on combating corruption - two Government's bills and one bill of the President -will be backed by the Parliament. This is also the test for parliamentarians for the upcoming elections: whether they are ready in words or by deeds vote to support decisions on real steps to make to curb corruption in Ukraine”.

“Unless we endorse these bills, the scheme will remain in which petty civil servants are pursued, while high-rank officials, judges, prosecutors, law enforcement system have corruption immunity,” he urged.

“We believe the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine would support all the three legislative initiatives submitted by the Government and the President,” the Head of Government said.