Pavlo Petrenko considers businesses, citizens and the state apparatus shall benefit from approval of the Government's anti-corruption laws

The adoption of a package of the governmental anti-corruption bills is the next step in the implementation of reforms in Ukraine. The Laws shall have positive impact on the business environment, citizens and the state apparatus. This was stated by the Minister of Justice of Ukraine Pavlo Petrenko at a briefing at the Government House on October 15, 2014.

The Minister stressed that the mentioned government initiatives target combating corruption, purification of authorities and simplification of public services, and they require appropriate actions and decisions of the Government.

In fact, Ukraine has introduced a number of important innovations that the Government will introduce gradually, "These innovations will be advantageous for business strictures, ordinary citizens, and the state apparatus, which undergoes a process of lustration," said Pavlo Petrenko.

He stressed that one of the novelties of the anti-corruption legislative package is open access to all property registries, the Ministry of Justice keeps. Pavlo Petrenko added that the Ministry had already started a procedure of preparation of the corresponding electronic registries to make them public.

According to him, a free access to property registers will give an opportunity in the framework of a large-scale verification of the state apparatus to check the lifestyle of each official.

The second novelty offered by the Government and backed by the Parliament concerns disclosing information about ultimate owners of the companies. The Minister reminded that before, journalists and ordinary citizens had no access to certain registries and information about proprietors of certain immovable property.

The Justice Minister accentuated there are carried out several serious reforms simultaneously in Ukraine: a lustration procedure to come in force on October 16, a package of anti-corruption laws providing for additional tools of control of the lifestyle of officials, their incomes and expenses, introducing an institution of electronic declaration of such incomes and expenses, with providing access to this registry for all those wishing.  

Meanwhile, according to Pavlo Petrenko, adoption by the Parliament of the law on prosecutor’s office is a plus. “Since 1996 the experts of the Council of Europe in all their findings have pointed out the fact that the Prosecutor's office of the Soviet times is the brake, which hampers to upgrade the entire law enforcement system, and also the institution that fails to perform the functions of the representative of the country to participate in criminal proceedings in court. The general supervision function had been one of the most disgraceful functions the state authorities performed, when general supervision was used as a tool of pressure on business or the public authorities", said the Minister of Justice.