Azerbaijan‘s anti- corruption policy

Over the past years, the Azerbaijani administration has taken substantial efforts to build normative-legislative framework for fight against corruption, as well as developed and adopted main anti-corruption policies. As a key element, the Anti-corruption Act 2005 came into force in January 2005. It formulates the definition of corruption, delineates the definition of the subject of corruption, scope of the corruption violations, outlines the Commission on Combating Corruption (CCC), as a specialized anticorruption body, obliges the public officials to disclose information of financial nature (the form and rules of disclosure are set out in a separate instrument), sets forth liability for breaking financial disclosure rules, sets the prohibition of working of kin together in public office, formulates corruption offences, etc.

Most importantly, the Act states that all State bodies and officials shall, within their powers, carry out the fight against corruption. The Anticorruption Act was followed by a series of statutes and statutory instruments, elaborated within the framework of the National Anti-Corruption Programme and Action Plan on its implementation for years 2004-2006, which brought the legislation in conformity with the international standards. In particular, the definition of bribery (active and passive) were introduced in full compliance with the definitions in the UN Convention against Corruption and Criminal Law Convention against Corruption, offence of trading in influence was introduced, money laundering was criminalised, etc to the satisfaction of the of the GRECO and Istanbul Action Plan of the Anticorruption Network of the OECD?.

In addition to the Act, the National Strategy on Increasing Transparency and Combating Corruption, which is the second in national anticorruption strategy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and the associated National Anticorruption Action Plan, were adopted by a Presidential Decree on the 28 July, 2007. The documents foresee specific measures and actions to be taken by relevant institutions of the Azerbaijani by building on the legislative and institutional framework. The new National Strategy is more specific while defining the areas of new legislation (whistleblowers protection, prevention of conflict of interest), enhancing cooperation and coordination between law enforcement agencies, introduction of common standards for submitting reports on anticorruption measures by all public institutions, drafting of institutional policies and anticorruption plans by public institutions, improving auditing, licensing, registering of businesses, etc. The distinction of the new national strategy from the previous one is that the former accentuates more on the prevention and specifically requires the public institutions to cooperate actively and involve NGOs in the implementation of the anticorruption measures.

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