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Foreign

GRECO Executive Secretary: I positively appreciate the new anti-corruption initiatives in Azerbaijan â€“ EXCLUSIVE

GRECO Executive Secretary: I positively appreciate the new anti-corruption initiatives in Azerbaijan â€“ <font color=red> EXCLUSIVE </font>

17 February 2011 10:36 (UTC +04:00)

Strasbourg. Fuad Gulubeyli â€“ APA. â€œAzerbaijan has demonstrated good cooperation since it became member of the Council of Europeâ€™s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) in 2004. The country made efforts in several spheres in order to conform to the norms determined by the Council of Europe,â€ Executive Secretary of the Council of Europeâ€™s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) Wolfgang Rau told APAâ€™s Europe bureau exclusively while commenting on the steps taken by Azerbaijan to combat corruption.

Wolfgang Rau said the technical support given by the Council of Europe and USAID in 2007-2009 within the framework of the project Support to Anti-Corruption Strategy of Azerbaijan was useful.
â€œGRECOâ€™s monitoring and assessment reports show that the efforts made up to now to combat corruption have not been sufficient. GRECO is making assessments equally in all member states within the framework of its assessment rounds. Azerbaijan was assessed within the framework of the first and second rounds. The assessment report mainly covered the prevention of corruption, independence, specialization of the national bodies in combating corruption, extent of the special immunity and civil servant status impeding corruption charges against government officials. According to the opinion adopted by GRECO in October, 2010, 15 of the recommendations sent to Azerbaijan in June, 2006, have already been fulfilled,â€ he said.

The executive secretary said new assessment report on Azerbaijan was prepared in 2010: â€œThe organization prepared the report within the framework of its third round. It described the issues related to criminal responsibility for corruption and transparency of funding the political parties. GRECO concluded that there were some gaps and introduced 17 recommendations to Azerbaijan. Consideration of these recommendations by Azerbaijan will be reviewed in the first quarter of 2012. I think Azerbaijan has to increase its efforts to eliminate shortagesâ€.

Rau positively appreciated the new anti-corruption initiatives in Azerbaijan and said his organization welcomed these efforts: â€œWe can only welcome any initiative directed towards the combating corruption. GRECO positively appreciated the National Strategy of Azerbaijan for increasing transparency and anti-corruption efforts (2007-2011) in its reports and expressed satisfaction with some concrete progresses made according to the recommendations given by the organization. These are important issues like working methods and means of the government officials investigating the corruption cases; special normative basis considering rights and duties of the public workers in anti-corruption field, including ethic rules of officials approved in May, 2007 and mechanisms of struggle against the money laundering. At the same time, some changes related to the GRECOâ€™s recommendations are also important and should be fulfilled certainlyâ€.

The executive secretary said Azerbaijan should intensify its activity in identifying and investigating the corruption cases: â€œRegarding the transparency of funding the political parties, generally, there are gaps in the points of laws on political parties related to sustainable transparency, control over the banking accounts and funding the election campaign of the political parties, as well as imperfect mechanisms in imposing sanctions in this field. From this point of view, GRECO also points out the necessity of adequate assistance to the political parties, as well as their respect to the rules of transparency. Besides that, we also support the idea of regular funding the political parties from the state budgetâ€.