SFS drastically changed approaches to the fight against corrupt activities among the service officials. Today, the work of internal security divisions is, first of all, aimed at achieving concrete results – prosecution of the guilty of committing corruption practices and reimbursement of damages, caused to the state, Deputy Head of SFS General Internal Security Division Serhei Martynov said to Era Radio, the press-office of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine reports.
According to him, the anticorruption program for 2015-2017, which is the first such program, approved in Ukraine, has been launched for comprehensive anticorruption system in the fiscal service.
“Neither of law enforcement bodies developed, accepted and implemented such program. For its development we used the best international experience. This is the result of cooperation of practical divisions of internal security and scientific units of the institution of financial law”, Serhei Martynov noted.
The anticorruption program, as the official explains, is aimed at involvement of all fiscal service employees in the fight against corruption. That is, each head of structural division should conduct anti-corruption work among his employees, analyze risks and develop measures on their elimination. However, one of the innovations is the introduction of mandatory procedure of conducting internal investigations not only on those persons, who are held criminally liable or are under investigation, but also on their directors and colleagues.
“Previously we worked only with the apprehended person. Today we verify activities of his director and other employees in order to clarify who might also be involved in corruption or could abet a crime. The responsibility for prevention of corrupt practices is imposed on the head of division”, Serhei Martynov emphasized.
He also told that 91% of all corrupt crimes in the fiscal services are committed by the employees of internal security divisions. However, this indicator is planned to be raised by 95%. The most widespread crime, according to SFS, is giving a bribe. For the last two years 130 cases of bribery and 350 – abuse of power and office - were detected. However, Serhei Martynov considers that latter crimes are more dangerous for the society, as they cause significant damages to the state budget.
This year SFS also observes the increased number of cases, reported by fiscal service employees, on attempted bribery.
“Our society still has no negative attitude to bribery, this is unfortunately traditional. And this fact is very positive that our employees report about such attempts and help to document them. Several such attempts were observed at customs, the bribes were also offered to tax police officers. I’d like to note that last year there were no such cases”, Serhei Martynov said.
The official named raising salaries of SFS employees and process automation, which will eliminate the human factor, as one of important factors of fighting against corrupt practices and particular preventive measures. One of such examples that he named is the introduction of the single point of contact at customs, which should firstly simplify procedures of customs registration, and, secondly, should significantly reduce possibilities for abuse and committing corruption.
