Proposal for military and police officers to declare assets

This morning, National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan chaired a conference of full-time National Assembly deputies to discuss two draft laws to be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration and approval at the upcoming 6th session, including the revised Law on Anti-Corruption.

Reporting on the explanation, acceptance and revision of a number of major issues with different opinions in the draft law, Chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee Le Thi Nga said that many National Assembly deputies agreed with the expansion of the subjects obliged to declare assets as stipulated in the draft law.

Besides, there is also another opinion suggesting to add the subjects with declaration obligation to be People's Army officers and People's Public Security officers.

Some National Assembly deputies suggested narrowing down the subjects required to declare, focusing on positions with high risk of corruption to match the capacity of the control agency and the ability to invest resources in controlling assets and income.

The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee said that this draft law clearly distinguishes different groups of subjects to apply appropriate methods of declaring and verifying assets and income. Accordingly, people holding positions of Department Director or equivalent or higher, and people working in positions with high risk of corruption must declare their assets and income annually for the purpose of tighter control.

Other subjects only have to declare for the first time or make additional declarations with the main purpose of creating a database for comparison and verification when they are appointed to a higher position or when there is a complaint, there is an increase in assets or income of 300 million VND or more in a year...

Expansion is too difficult to implement

Pham Van Hoa, Deputy Head of the Dong Thap Province Delegation, also agreed with the expansion of the asset declaration to include parents and minor children. However, he said that it should only be applied to those holding important positions in Party and State agencies and agencies in areas prone to corruption.

“Recently, the recovery of corrupt assets was less than 20% while the State suffered huge losses, and relatives of those people had huge assets that could not be recovered. When Mr. A and Mr. B were prosecuted and imprisoned, their assets were either empty or only a little,” Mr. Hoa said.

Deputy To Van Tam, Deputy Head of the Kon Tum National Assembly Delegation, also pointed out the fact that there is a case where a man has not done anything, has nothing, but owns a huge amount of assets, but he wondered: "If we expand the subjects of asset declaration like that, will the feasibility of the law be guaranteed? The law is not feasible, not practical, it falls into formality."

According to Deputy To Van Tam, expanding the subjects of asset declaration requires attention: "In addition to parents and children, there are also grandparents and grandchildren. If we follow the Civil Code to include the first and second order of heirs in the declaration, it is too broad and too broad."

Mr. Tam also wondered about the case of minor children, or parents who force them to declare, then ask them to explain the origin of their assets but they cannot explain, so how should we deal with them when they are not subjects of corruption, because they do not have positions or authority.

Therefore, the Kon Tum Provincial Delegate suggested that this time we should temporarily not expand the declaration scope to continue to improve it.

Thu Hang