Transparency Azerbaijan holds public discussion on “Policy Paper on Whistleblowers»

Posted by: | Posted on: Апрель 29, 2015

11205143_924896644197845_8518475406843785568_nBaku, 29 April 2015 — Transparency Azerbaijan, in the framework of the European Union-funded regional project «National Integrity System Assessment in the ENP East countries, today held a roundtable event to launch a public discussion on the “Policy Paper on Whistleblowers» proposed by Transparency Azerbaijan. The paper finds that most whistleblowers in Azerbaijan are entrepreneurs and citizens who reveal petty corruption, as well as small civil servants and employees of budget-funded state institutions who report financial frauds. Transparency Azerbaijan calls for a new law to protect and to encourage whistleblowers reporting corruption cases in both the private and public sectors.

At the event, Rena Safaraliyeva, Executive Director of Transparency Azerbaijan, underlined that under the framework of Action Plan on Combating Corruption (2012-2015), the Azerbaijani government committed to developing the draft law on protecting whistleblowers in corruption cases. In this regard, Transparency Azerbaijan is working closely with the Anti-Corruption Commission to draft the whistleblower protection law. As the Action Plan will come to a close at the end this year, we hope that our government, business community, NGOs and parliament members will work constructively to pass the whistleblower protection law in Azerbaijan, said Safaraliyeva.

In July 2014, Transparency Azerbaijan released the report “National Integrity System Assessment in Azerbaijan”. This report showed that some crucial anti-corruption laws (regulating whistleblower protection, conflict of interests) are lacking in Azerbaijan. The National Action Plan Against Corruption for 2012 – 2015 indicates the preparation of the draft law — rather than adoption of the law itself — thus it may take longer than expected to adopt the actual law on whistleblower protection.

Considering this, Mahammad Muradov, Project Coordinator of NIS, said that it is the time to adopt whistleblower protection law. Thus, there is a need to protect whistleblowers of corruption cases. According to preliminary investigation, local whistleblowers of corruption cases are subject to dismissal, administrative pressures, libel, slander as well as health problems. In this regard, new law should enable immunity to any disclosure from disciplinary proceedings related to libel, slander, as well as copyright and data protection.

The “Policy Paper on Whistleblowers» proposes a conceptual framework on whistleblowers and whistle blowing, and analyzes the current situation in Azerbaijan, as well as recommends main principles for whistleblower legislation in Azerbaijan.

The concept paper can be found here.

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