Prevention and combatting conflict of interest in Kosovo – Anti-Corruption Week
10/12/2018
GAP Institute, Legal and Political Studies Group (LPSG), Initiative for Progress (INPO) and the Columbus Institute, organized a roundtable on “Implementation of the Law on Prevention of the Conflict of Interest in the exercise of public executive functions”, as one of the activities of the Anti-Corruption Week 2018.
In this event, the common report of the NGO Coalition, titled “Prevention and combatting conflict of interest in Kosovo”, addressing all aspects of the purpose of the Law on Prevention of the Conflict of Interest in the exercise of public executive functions and its implementation by the executive. GAP Institute, GLPS, INPO and Columbus Institute presented findings of the research on senior officials of the Office of Prime Minister, 13 ministries and 38 Kosovo municipalities.
One of the problems that continues to be raised in the annual reports of the European Commission on Kosovo is the lack of an efficient system on the declaration, origin and control of assets of senior public officials and gifts for all public officials.
From around 2000 senior public officials in the institutions discussed in the roundtable, 238 hold more than one post, 80 receive additional income, per diems or compensations and 49 receive pensions from the Kosovo budget in addition to holding official posts in respective institutions.
In addition to reviewing asset statements by ACA, organizations have sent requests for access to public documents to relevant institutions, requesting access to the list of wages, per diems, compensations and additional income, as well as on any other award from the Kosovo budget. 13 central level institutions have not responded to our request, 15 offered deficient information and only three provided complete data. Similarly, in the local government institutions, 16 of 38 municipalities have provided complete responses, 12 offered partial responses and 10 did not respond at all.
Panel members of this round table were Alison Storsve, representative of the US Embassy, Abelard Tahiri, Minister of Justice, Uran Ismaili, Minister of Health, Mahir Yagcilar, Minister of Public Administration, and Safet Berisha, representative of the National Audit Office.
All panel members and participants agreed that internal institutional mechanisms should be established to identify all officials holding more than one public post, and receiving more than one salary from public institutions. At the same time, the need to harmonize laws and raise awareness on the legal mechanisms to prevent conflict of interest in the exercise of public functions was discussed.
To read the full report please click Here.
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