|
www.coe.int/greco |
|
 |
About GRECO |
| |
Meetings |
| |
Evaluations |
| |
Documents |
| |
News flashes / Press releases |
| |
Web resources |
|
|
10th
Anniversary Conference |
| |
Site map |
| |
Contact us |
| |
Restricted access |
Group of States against Corruption publishes report on
Azerbaijan
Press Release
Strasbourg, 18 November 2010 – The Council of Europe’s
Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) today published its
Third Round Evaluation Report on Azerbaijan, which concludes that
there are major shortcomings concerning the legislation on
corruption and transparency in party funding.
Regarding the criminalisation of corruption [theme
I], the country’s legal framework contains several important
deficiencies in relation to the requirements established under the
Council of Europe’s
Criminal Law Convention on Corruption. For example, the
concept of “official” used by the relevant bribery provisions does
not cover all civil servants and public employees. The offer and
the promise of a bribe as well as the acceptance of an offer or a
promise do not constitute completed crimes.
Moreover, bribery of foreign and international officials, domestic
and foreign jurors and arbitrators as well as bribery in the
private sector and trading in influence are not fully addressed by
the country’s legislation. GRECO regrets that Azerbaijan is one of
the member States to have entered nearly the maximum number of
reservations allowed under the Convention. It furthermore calls
upon Azerbaijan to become a Party to the Additional Protocol to
the Convention. Above all, Azerbaijan should be more proactive in
detecting, investigating and prosecuting corruption cases.
Concerning transparency of party funding [theme
II], GRECO stresses that the transparency standards
established by
Recommendation Rec(2003)4 of the Committee of Ministers of the
Council of Europe on Common Rules against Corruption in the
Funding of Political Parties and Electoral Campaigns are
difficult to apply to a country which lacks a truly pluralistic
party landscape, where most political parties are not active
between elections and no political party except for the ruling
party has significant resources.
Against this background, GRECO focuses on a limited number of
major shortcomings, in particular, the insufficient transparency
provisions in the Law on Political Parties, the lack of
supervision over party accounts, the insufficient monitoring of
election campaign funding as well as the fragmentary regime of
sanctions available in this area. It must be ensured that
political parties in Azerbaijan are provided with adequate support
to comply with further transparency requirements. GRECO also
welcomes the idea of introducing state aid for the regular
financing of political parties that is currently being discussed.
The report addresses 17 recommendations to Azerbaijan. GRECO will
assess the implementation of these recommendations in the first
half of 2012 through its specific compliance procedure.
***
GRECO was established in 1999 by the Council of Europe to monitor states’
compliance with the organisation’s anti-corruption standards. Currently it
comprises all 47 member states and the United States of America.
More information on GRECO
Press Unit of the Council of Europe
Tel. +33 3 88 41 47 07
Internet: www.coe.int
e-mail: pressunit@coe.int