According to Klemenčič, Slovenia was the first among the transition countries to have introduced oversight of assets of public office holders, but no changes have been made in this area in the last two decades.
One of the downsides of the system, which is now obsolete and inefficient, is that the criteria for MPs, judges, prosecutors, ministers, mayors, deputy mayors and directors of local institutions are the same, which is "mixing apples and oranges", Klemenčič said. On the other hand, some public office holders are not included in the system, such as the staff at the Corruption Prevention Commission and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), which were set up subsequently.
There is no unified registry, no record as to who is obligated to submit data on assets, and there is no way that the commission could check whether the data obtained are true. The corruption watchdog has been working on improving the system since 2011 and will present proposals for legislative changes at the beginning of April.
The commission also presented at today's press conference a report on the assets of public office holders, who had until the end of January to report their belongings. The data show that an average Slovenian MPs has a little over EUR 13,000 in the bank and another EUR 3,400 of cash at home. Their liabilities average EUR 48,000, while they have given out more than EUR 97,000 in loans.
An average MP has just over EUR 154,000-worth of movable assets and some EUR 4,800 in securities. Ministers meanwhile on average have some EUR 19,000 in bank deposits, while they store no cash at home. Their liabilities stand at just over EUR 41,000. Their movable assets are worth some EUR 8,000 and securities some EUR 9,100. An average mayor has some EUR 19,000 on their bank account, little more than EUR 1,600 of cash at home, more than EUR 25,000 in liabilities and has given out EUR 8,900 in loans. The value of their movable assets is somewhere around EUR 8,900 and of their securities EUR 7,900.
As many as 14 MPs from the previous term failed to submit the required data to the commission until the given deadline along with the previous Minister for Slovenians Abroad Boštjan Žekš, four state secretaries, 52 mayors and one incumbent MP. Unless they report their assets soon, they are facing a fine or a 10% pay cut a month, Klemenčič said. In 2011 and 2012, the commission launched five proceedings against public office holders and two of them have already concluded with a fine of several thousand euros. The persons in question were former chief of staff to the prime minister, Simona Dimic, and state secretary Andrej Horvat, who submitted false data to the commission.
SOURCE: The Slovenia Times
