Regular peer review by participating States ensures the effectiveness of UN Conventions Against Corruption

In 2019, representatives from Latvia and Paraguay will analyze the state of the UN Convention against Corruption implementation in Ukraine. In the same time, on June 4, 2019, Ukrainian experts, including a representative of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, and Czech colleagues began analyzing how the Convention is being implemented in Croatia.

On May 27-31, 2019, the 10th session of the Implementation Review Group of the UN Convention against Corruption was held in Vienna. Oleksandr Skomarov, the Deputy Head of the Detectives Division, and Anna Horbenko, the Head of the Information Processing and Analysis Department, represented the NABU at the event. The information they shared with the international community concerned the interesting cases on identification of assets abroad, the state of implementation of the Convention in Ukraine and the achievements of the NABU.

“For almost four years of our work, we detected and seized assets abroad at a cost of tens of millions of US dollars, including real estate, bank accounts, and corporate rights to enterprises”, said Oleksandr Skomarov during the presentation of the results of cooperation of the NABU with international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The solid foundation of this cooperation is the UN Convention against Corruption ratified by Ukraine, which encourages the member states to strengthen cooperation by signing bilateral and multilateral agreements between the competent authorities.

“The National Bureau has concluded more than 10 interdepartmental agreements with foreign competent authorities, as a result of which it was possible to improve the exchange of operational information,” said Anna Horbenko during her report at the 10th session of the Implementation Review Group.

Among other advantages of the Convention for the NABU, she announced the following:

• Participating States should provide information upon request, regardless of the presence or absence of a mutual recognition of the relevant act for which information is requested as a crime. It becomes especially useful during identifying of submission of false data to e-declaration by top officials;
• Bank secrecy is not a reason to refuse to provide legal assistance. This is extremely important for the NABU, most of the requests of which relate to information and documents on bank accounts, movement of funds and final beneficiaries;
• The Convention allows speeding up the exchange of confidential information without prior request. As of May 2019, the National Bureau sent more than 500 requests for international legal assistance to more than 50 countries of the world.