Assumptions to the draft law on asset declarations
Central Anti-Corruption Bureau presents assumptions for the draft law on asset declarations:
- one unified legal act, replacing the inaccurate, outdated and inconsistent asset declaration provisions contained in twenty-eight legal acts,
- one electronic asset declaration form, replacing the seventeen existing model asset declaration forms,
- the inclusion of regulations on how asset declarations are to be submitted electronically. Digitization of the process of submitting asset declarations will, on the one hand, make the process much easier for obligated persons (electronic filling of the declaration form with the support of data from public registers and declared in previous asset declarations), on the other hand, it will make it much easier for authorized bodies to examine the correctness and veracity of these declarations,
- introduction of instructions for filling out the asset declaration, at the moment there are no formal, uniformly binding guidelines, specifying the obligations of those obliged to submit asset declarations,
- introduction of uniform deadlines for the submission of asset declarations for all professional groups in place of the inconsistent and inconsistent deadlines for submission of declarations by individual professional groups,
- revised for reasonableness the catalog of persons obliged to submit asset declarations, including in particular politically exposed persons (PEPs) not covered by the obligation to submit asset declarations in the current state of the law,
- clarifying the provisions on the subject matter scope of the asset declarations to be submitted, which will eliminate the existing interpretative doubts of those obliged to submit declarations,
- introducing definitions of certain concepts missing in the legal system, such as “collection”, as an ordered collection of objects of one type, such as works of art or jewelry products. In order to achieve precision in the submission of property declarations and to facilitate the determination of the belonging of individual assets by married persons, to define the concept of personal property,
- to develop a precise catalog of property components, taking into account modern ways of locating assets, especially in the area of financial resources (e.g., cryptocurrencies),
- introduction of a sanction for failure to submit an asset declaration on leaving office - in the current state of the law there is no such sanction,
- introduction of the possibility of correcting the statement. This is because the current legislation does not provide for the possibility of correcting statements that have already been submitted, although in practice such corrections are made,
- clarification of the provisions on the openness of asset declarations,
- introduction of a new competence of the Head of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, in terms of demanding from persons obliged to submit an asset declaration, to submit an additional statement, according to the state of assets as of the date specified in the summons,
- introduction of uniform, realistic and adequate criminal and financial sanctions (diversification of responsibility).