President Volodymyr Zelensky has vetoed a bill allowing public officials not to disclose their relatives’ property in asset declarations, the President’s Office said on June 15.
In October the Constitutional Court eliminated penalties for lying in declarations and destroyed the entire asset declaration system by depriving the National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAPC), which is tasked with checking declarations, of most of its powers.
On June 3, parliament approved the second reading of a bill restoring jail terms for lying in asset declarations. However, the Rada inserted an amendment that allows officials not to declare the assets of their relatives. An official must declare their relatives’ assets only if they inform him or her about such assets, according to the bill.
“This gives a legal loophole to dishonest officials for not declaring their movable property and real estate,” the President’s Office said.
Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, believes this amendment effectively sought to destroy the asset declaration system.
The controversial amendment on relatives was pushed by Verkhovna Rada speaker Dmytro Razumkov from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, Shabunin told the Kyiv Post. But if parliament fails to restore jail terms for lying in asset declarations by the end of the current parliamentary session in July, this will mean Zelensky himself does not want them to be restored, he added. Razumkov did not respond to requests for comment.
In December parliament, in which Zelensky’s Servant of the People party has a constitutional majority, also passed a different bill restoring penalties for lying in asset declarations. However, the bill helped corrupt officials by imposing extremely mild penalties — fines, community service and restrictions on freedom that do not include imprisonment.
As a result of the Constitutional Court debacle, Zelensky also suspended Constitutional Court Chairman Oleksandr Tupytsky in December and fired him in March, using criminal charges against him as justification.
The Constitutional Court refused to implement Zelensky’s decrees, saying that they were unconstitutional.
In December, prosecutors charged Tupytsky with unlawfully influencing and bribing a witness to induce false testimony. He denies the accusations.
