The National Integrity Authority (ANI) launched on November 23, 2020, a new information campaign at the national level, entitled "Keep CALM and local integrity!".
 

The aim of the information campaign is to significantly reduce the number of procedures for controlling assets and personal interests, compliance with the legal regime of conflicts of interest, incompatibilities, restrictions and limitations targeting the representatives of the local public authorities (heads of districts, mayors, deputy mayors, local councilors).

The campaign will take place between November 23 and December 24, 2020 in Chisinau and in the districts of the country by organizing educational activities, including on the Zoom platform, based on identified risk regions, and distributing information materials to promote integrity standards within the local public authorities.

At the event, the president of ANI, Mrs. Rodica Antoci and Mr. Viorel Furdui, the executive director of the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM) signed a Cooperation Agreement in the field of integrity.

"In the last two years, most of the violations found by the Integrity Inspectorate targeted local elected officials. Of the 152 finding acts issued, the first in the ranking of the most frequent violations are - 40 mayors, 7 former mayors, heads of districts, 42 current local councilors and 12 former councilors. Most of them were from the districts of Cahul, Anenii Noi, Criuleni, Chisinau, Singerei, Orhei, and the admitted violations were referred to situations of conflict of interest and incompatibilities. I want to strengthen our efforts in support of the local elected officials and work together to promote standards of integrity in local administrations to prevent and reduce the number of such violations", said Rodica ANTOCI, president of ANI.

"Thank you for this openness of your institution, because there is a problem and it needs to be solved. Indeed, within CALM there are signals from the territory about the cases you mentioned in the presented statistics. I want to mention that we are open and starting today we establish a partnership and a long-term collaboration. We know very well that in 90% of cases of violations there is no intention or bad faith on the part of these local elected officials, but a discrepancy in the legislation and we must clearly establish the status of the local elected, all legal regimes of conflicts of interest, incompatibilities, etc. ” concluded Viorel Furdui, the executive director of CALM.

The first training sessions will be organized between November 24-26, 2020 for the officials of the Chisinau City Hall.