On 11 December 2020, the CoE/EU Central Asia Transparency and Action against Economic Crime (CA TAEC) contributed to the International online roundtable «Improving the criminal and criminal procedural legislation in order to strengthen anti-corruption measures », organised by the General Prosecutor’s Office (GPO) Academy of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The webinar brought together the Uzbek authorities involved in the reform of the country’s criminal legislation, including the GPO Academy and the Anti-Corruption Agency as well as academia and parliamentarians, international experts and representatives from OECD, UNODC and iNGO Regional Dialogue, who provided their input and shared best practices related to the topics of criminalisation of corruption and liability of legal persons. CA TAEC focused its input on draft revision of the Criminal Code provisions related to criminalisation of corruption. In that sense, CA TAEC reviewed the draft provisions against relevant international standards and presented the findings and recommendations for improvement during the said roundtable. The discussion touched upon inter alia the definitions (e.g. the scope of “officials”); shortcomings in incriminations (incl. reg. money laundering and trading in influence) and effective regret provisions. In addition to answering the questions from the authorities, the CA TAEC expert gave concrete examples of how to transpose the international standards in the national legislation and solutions undertaken by other jurisdictions.

This assistance was provided pursuant to the Workplan priorities concerning raising awareness on the Council of Europe standards and establishing the system criminal liability of legal persons. It follows the project contribution to the round table organised by the Academy of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Uzbekistan on law enforcement aspects and criminalisation of corruption (21 July 2020) and the webinar organised by the Project on the Council of Europe anti-corruption and ant-money laundering standards and monitoring mechanisms (16 September 2020).

This activity was organised in the framework of the project “Promoting Transparency and Action against Economic Crime”, part of the Central Asia Rule of Law Programme 2020-2023, joint initiative co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe. The project is aimed at strengthening capacities to fight and prevent economic crime in five Central Asian countries, including Uzbekistan.