As it is widely known, LEPL Civil Service Bureau is the entity entitled to monitor the timely submission of the asset declaration by senior officials in Georgia. E.g according to the Civil Service Bureau data, nine instances of the senior officials violating the obligation to submit asset declaration within the period of two months from the moment of leaving office have been monitored. The fine of 1000 Gel was imposed on the eight of the senior officials and the former deputy head of the Government of Aspindza was released from the obligation to pay the fine by the court.

At the same time, unlike the monitoring of the timely submission of the asset declarations, the senior officials themselves are the ones who bear the responsibility for the truthfulness of the information declared by them. There is no public institution which would be entitled to review and check the authenticity of the data submitted.

According to the law on Conflict of Interests and Corruption in Civil Service the fine of 1000 GEL shall be imposed on those who fail to submit asset declaration in a timely manner. In addition Senior official will be subjected to criminal liability in case if he/she fails to submit the asset declaration within the period enshrined by the legislation (e.i. when within the period of two weeks from the moment of imposing the administrative sanction the official fails to comply with the law) as well in the cases when incomplete or false information has been maliciously submitted by the official. According to the law a fine, socially useful labor or deprivation of the right to occupy a position or pursue a particular activity shall be imposed on the official committing the abovementioned misconduct.

IDFI conducts permanent monitoring of the asset decorations. In this article we would like to draw your attention to the cases identified by us, when incomplete or false data was submitted in asset declarations by senior officials.
E.g according to the information on salaries received sent by the self-governing entities of the Karali Municipality the former head of the City Council Paata Gviniashvili has received the income of 76 850 (salary and bonuses) GEL for conducting his official duties in the year of 2013. 45 050 Gel alone constituted the bonuses received by the official. After looking into the asset declaration submitted by Mr. Gviniashvili in 2014, we found that the amount of income received by him during 2013 was declared to be 32 070 Gel only (Asset declarations submitted in 2014 cover the information on the income received during the year of 2013).

Another case of misconduct we would like to draw your attention to is linked with the asset declarations submitted by the former high officials of the Penitentiary Department. According to the documents disseminated by various media sources in June 2014 the amount of income received (salary, salary supppements and bonus) by the chairman and a deputy chairman of the Penitentiary Department in December 2013 fluctuated between 18 000 - 40 000 Gel. Nevertheless the information was not included in the asset declarations of these public officials.

Precisely, the asset declaration of the Chairman of the Penitentiary Department does not include any information on the income received as a result of holding the position of a senior official in 201. It should be highlighted that Dimitri Darbaiseli was appointed to the position on November 29th, 2013. Hence the information on the income received by him in the month of December, which according to the disseminated information was equal to 18 255 Gel (salary, salary supplements and bonus) should have been included in the declaration.

We face the same problem when looking into the asset declarations of the three former deputy chairman of the Penitentiary Department (Simon Macaidze, Gogi Gakhria and Vladimer Bunturidze). In these cases the asset declarations include the information on the salaries received by the senior officials but the data on the addition income (salary supplement and bonuses) that the officials received according to the information disseminated by media is missing here as well.

It is worth highlighting that the senior officials of the Penitentiary Department have not yet officially rejected the information of receiving the bonuses and salary supplements in the month of December 2013. Moreover, the dissemination of this information resulted in the situation when the deputy chairmen left offices. The stated serves as an additional ground for our supposition, that the information on the income received in the month of December was deliberately left out from the declarations. This as already mentioned above is an act punishable under the Crimianl Code of Georgia (art. 355). The cases of the former Chairman of the Parliament - David Bakrdze  and the head of the Special State Security Service – Temur Janashia  should also be mentioned here. Both high officials are accused of deliberately including false/ incomplete information in their asset declarations. We find it crucial proper steps to be taken by the investigative agencies in order to have a detailed look into the alleged misconducts, in case if the information included in this article is in compliance with reality.

In addition it should be highlighted that till to date we have been unable to receive the public information on the amount of salary supplements and bonuses received by the senior officials in the Penitentiary Department during the period of 2013-2014. It is clear that this information would have shed light on the issue of the incomplete asset declarations. On June the 4th, 2014 IDFI referred to the Minister of Corrections of Georgia with the administrative appeal regarding the failure of the sub-entity of the Ministry - the Penitentiary Department to duly fulfill its obligation. The ministry after looked into the case, accepted the appeal and directed the Department to hand out the requested information. E.i the data on the salary supplements and bonuses, representational costs, official visit costs abroad and the diplomas of the senior officials. Unfortunately, regardless of the decision of the Ministry, the Penitentiary department till to date fails to hand out the requested information.

As a conclusion it should be stated that the system of the asset declarations of senior public officials in Georgia is world widely seen to be a good practice, setting high standard of the proactive transparency in the country. Nevertheless the latest cases of the public officials failing to include or deliberately omitting certain information from the asset declarations have made it clear that creating a body that would monitor the system of asset declarations is crucial. Nowadays only civic society and media organizations are the ones who look into the asset declarations and indentify certain gaps in various cases. These organizations can not have access to the same amount of information and/or data bases as public entities themselves. Hence instances of the incorrect or incomplete information been deliberately excluded from the asset declaration are left without due attention. This materializes itself in the situation when the process of the fight against corruption and the development of the effective preventive measures is set back.

It should be emphasized that the problem described in this article is well internalized by the government of Georgia. Within the auspices of the Open Government Partnership Action Plan for 2014-2015 (adopted by the Decree of the Government 557-2 and into effect from September 18), the government of Georgia has undertaken the obligation to set up and implement the system of monitoring asset declarations. This objective is also included in the anti-corruption action plan of Georgia. We find that this article highlights the importance of setting up a well-operational system for monitoring asset declarations one more time.