The Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC) cannot justify its omission, especially when it comes to government officials, by stating that they started their work only in 2016, as confirmed by the verdict of the Administrative Court adopted in February 2018.
According to the verdict of 28 February 2018, the Administrative Court annulled an act of APC from 11 April 2017, by which APC found that 11 members of DPS in the Parliament of the Capital City did not violate the Law on Prevention of Corruption.
In the reasoning of the act, APC stated that the obligation under Article 13 of that law, that the resignation shall be submitted if a public official performs two public functions at the same time, relates only to public officials who took over the second function after January 1, 2016.
The Administrative Court found that such reasons were vague and incomprehensible, and did not indicate the correctness of the decision in this legal matter.
“The provision of the Article 107 paragraph 1 of the Law stipulates that the Agency shall start operating on January 01, 2016, while paragraph 3 of the said Article prescribes that the Agency shall take over the affairs of the Commission for Prevention of Conflict of Interest and the Directorate for Anti-Corruption Initiative, employees, as well as the rights and obligations, cases, equipment, means of work, documentation, registers,” it is stated in the verdict of the Administrative Court.
The general principle is, as it is added, that the procedure is conducted (implementation of procedural rules) under the law that was in force at the time of initiation and conduct of the proceedings, unless otherwise provided by the transitional provisions of the newly adopted law.
“The law prescribes that proceedings initiated by the date of entry into force of that law shall be completed according to the law under which they were initiated. In this case, the proceeding was initiated under the 2014 Law, which was in effect from January 1, 2016, and procedural rules are applied to this proceeding under this law. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, whether an official is in conflict of interest must be decided according to the law that was in force at the moment of starting another function, i.e. in this case, according to the Law on Prevention of Conflict of Interest,” the Administrative Court noted.
Let us remind that in mid-February this year, APC refused to initiate proceedings against Milo Đukanović and Branimir Gvozdenović because in their 2010 reports they did not report a gift trip to Dubai from Duško Knežević, worth nearly €30,000.
Agency Director Sreten Radonjić and his associates explained this by saying that this body started working on January 1, 2016, and that they cannot retroactively initiate misdemeanors proceedings from the former Law on Prevention of Conflict of Interest.
MANS filed a lawsuit against this decision to the Administrative Court.
We expect the Administrative Court to annul the decision of APC since the Court already determined the obligations of the Agency in the case of DPS members.
MANS
