The Agency should make public the names of millionaire officials

Prishtina, April 8, 2013 – Declaration of assets by public officials has been and remains one of the most sensitive issues in the fight against corruption. Due to the fact that, since 2010, when the Law on Declaration, Origin and Control of Assets of Senior Public Officials was approved, figures that these officials have openly published over the years indicate their involvement in corrupt practices and lack of transparency toward citizens of Kosovo.

Last year, FOL Movement has developed a platform. In this platform are included 224 public officials and are calculated and compared their assets over the years. As in most of them, there is a big discrepancy, we asked the authorities, such as state prosecution, to initiate investigations regarding declarations of officials, but we did not see any serious investigation so far.
As already known, the deadline of declaration of assets by public officials was by the end of last month. According to the above mentioned law, the publication of declaration forms should be within two months on the website of Anti-Corruption Agency. However, the Agency published its annual report few days ago, which among others mentioned 9 public officials who have millions of dollars difference in the declaration of assets over a period of 4 years.

We know that the law allows a period of two months until the declaration forms are made public, but for the sake of transparency in public, the Agency should make public the names of these officials who became millionaires. Such a requirement would also allow the prosecution and investigation authorities (police and prosecution) have a basis for initiating investigations against these officials who have robbed public budget to get rich. This is actually responsibility of Agency; on the other hand it would facilitate the work of media, non-governmental organizations and society in general.
However, once the declaration forms will be made public by the Agency, FOL will incorporate them into its platform (http://www.levizjafol.org/al/deklarimet) and then everyone interested can observe the differences of annual declaration of senior public officials.