Artem Sytnyk: officials should be held criminally responsible for undeclared income

The National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine will have the authority to hold officials criminally responsible for inconsistencies between their expenses and income once the electronic declaration system starts to work. This was reported by the NABU Director Artem Sytnyk during his interview for the “Sobytiya nedeli” TV show.

“While analysing the officials' 2015 declarations the NABU detectives often noticed differences between the levels of declared incomes and actual expenses. However at present those who did not declare their property bear only administrative liability,” - said Artem Sytnyk.

He emphasized that “some parliament members declared incomes amounting to more than 100 million UAH in 2015 even though they were members of the last three parliaments and thus had no right to engage in other economic activities”.

“The judges' declarations usually do not include information on 3-4 cars and several real estate units. And the fastest way of dealing with such violations, unfortunately, does not work so far,” - said the Bureau's Director.

According to him, the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption has to adopt the form of electronic declarations, and only then the article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (declaring false information) will come into force. After that the officials will bear not administrative, but criminal liability for not declaring all their property.