AntAC went to court to verify legal grounds for hiding e-declarations of military prosecutors

Anticorruption Action Center filed the case to the Administrative court of Kyiv against decision of the Chief military prosecutor Matios and the Agency for prevention of corruption to close public access to e-declarations of military prosecutors.

The Court opened a judicial proceeding.

In April 2017 NAPC upon request from the Chief military prosecutor Matios closed public access to e-declarations of more than 200 military prosecutors. Matios claimed that such a decision was in line with the law on state protection for official of judicial and law-enforcement bodies, that provides for measures to ensure confidentiality of information about respective people for security reasons.

However, legal analysis of respective law shows that confidentiality measures should be applied to prevent disclosure of information regarding place of residence of such people. Since public registry of e-declarations does not display information on the place of residence of declarants, there are no legal grounds for closing access to e-declarations.

To create legal opportunity to hide from the public e-declarations of prosecutors and any law-enforcement or military official, representatives of Prosecutor’s General Office and the Agency for Prevention of Corruption developed a draft law that creates unlimited opportunities for closing public access to e-declarations of any public official. The draft law:

  • offers military officials and officials of the State Agency for Special Communications to submit paper declarations instead of e-declarations;
  • allows state bodies that deal with security to close public access to information about their officials from all state registries;
  • closes public access  to declarations of all officials that perform any functions pertaining to anti-terrorist operation.

The draft law was discussed on meeting of the Anticorruption committee of the parliament on June 15th. The Chief military prosecutor Matios claimed that abolishing public access to e-declarations of military officials and prosecutors must be seen as security measure. However, members of the committee rejected the draft law and the idea behind it under the reasoning that the registry of e-declarations does not display any personal information like identity numbers or place of residence of a person.

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