This fifth seminar – with 37 participants as audience – was called to acquaint representatives of the corruption prevention units and departments at Ministries and state bodies as well as specialists working in Kyiv oblast with a package of anticorruption laws that were adopted in October 2014.

 

Keeping today's seminar in mind, almost 190 anticorruption specialists of the main departments of justice and oblast state administrations have already gone through the training. Presentations of the Ministry of Justice experts and their colleagues of the Institute for Applied Humanitarian Research have predictably stirred up lively discussions from the event participants. They specifically emphasized interest in such areas as corruption whistleblowing, neutrality in the process of decision-making, actions to be undertaken when orders received by civil servants are perceived to be illegal.

 

Quite traditionally, interest was indicated for practical questions of applying new anticorruption regulations pertaining to mechanisms of financial control over civil servants' declarations, defining the conflict of interest and real-life illustrative examples.

 

Seminar participants were offered to channel their emerging questions regarding anticorruption legislation to the Ministry of Justice and specialists of the Institute for Applied Humanitarian Research.

 

Certificates were issued to those representatives of the local departments of justice, oblast state administrations, and municipalities, who had successfully gone through this training.

 

This work is supported by UNDP in anticipation of the launch of the new anticorruption body of Ukraine – the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption. The new NAPC-support project will be aimed at enabling the agency to effectively verify assets declarations, do lifestyle monitoring, address conflict of interest situations and conduct corruption risk assessments.

 

At the same time, the civil society will be an important partner of the project, especially in its regional dimension, where CSOs may act to lower corruption tolerance levels in respective communities. The project will launch in mid-2015 and will last until the end of 2018, made possible through support of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.