The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, went to the extraordinary plenary session on the corruption that hosts the Congress of Deputies loaded with a battery of measures on Wednesday with which he seeks to appease his parliamentary partners and strengthen a legislature, in the air after the scandal of alleged collection of commissions for the award of works that affects the last two secretaries of the PSOE organization.
“I am here to recover the confidence of the parliamentary groups that support the impulse that the progressive coalition government makes of their executive tasks, To clear the doubts that citizens who follow this appearance can legitimately have, counting everything I know and realize what we are going to do to overcome this crisis, “said Sánchez.
The strategy involves bringing to Parliament the approval of a state plan to fight against Corruption endowed with 15 measures, which the Executive designed jointly with the Department of Anti -Corruption, Integrity and OECD Government, and after listening to the rest of the parliamentary groups Already civil society experts. Also, sources from La Moncloa detail, proposals from the Open Government forum and the group of states against corruption of the European Council and recommendations of the European Commission have been incorporated.
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“The plan will mean the greatest impulse to the prevention, struggle and repair of corruption that has been made in recent decades in Spain and the objective is to place our country at the forefront of the continent,” Sánchez said, detailing the five axes that the plan entails.
The first axis is that of the “Risk prevention and strengthening controls against corruption” and includes six measures.
1. First, an independent public integrity agency will be launched, which will assume the key functions in preventionsupervision and persecution of corrupt practices. Will independently coordinate the fight against corruption.
2. In second terms, the Executive proposes an extension to the entire administration of The methodology applied to the award of the Next Generation funds to improve the audit and control of funds.
3. The third measure is to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) applications in the public sector contracting platform to automate and optimize the identification of anomalous patterns or signs of fraud.
4. The fourth point implies the requirement of anti -corruption compliance systems to companies that want to hire with Administrations and deployment of integrity pacts for certain public contracts, as already do other European countries.
5. The fifth initiative is to promote the new Open Administration Law that reinforces the Active transparency obligation, establish early alert mechanisms and update the State Transparency Portal. Random and annual patrimonial controls will be established for high positions throughout their mandate.
6. In sixth term, controls on political parties will be reinforced. This point includes obligation to parties and foundations with public financing exceeding US $ 58,531 to carry out external and independent audits; deepen transparency in donations and private financing, reducing the publication threshold to US $ 2,926 and the publication period for a month from receipt; and the approval of a transparency and integrity law of interest groups.
7. The second axis of the plan is to improve the protection of complainants of corruption cases and includes a central measure. It is about including in the new criminal prosecution law that anyone who comes directly to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Police or a judge to denounce acts of corruption, has full guarantees of confidentiality, protection and legal support.
In this sense, companies will be required to have internal denunciation channels and We will force all public administrations to incorporate these channels into a general system of institutional integrity.
The third axis, which seeks the reinforcement of the State’s ability to investigate, judge and punish corruption, consists of five other measures.
8. The eighth proposal of the lot is the creation of specialized sections in crimes against public administration within the new courts of instance, with specialized judges, which will help to expedite judicial processes and increase their effectiveness. It seeks to grant preferential character and a summary procedure for the causes involving public office will be created.
9. The ninth action seeks to strengthen the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor’s Office with more means and the referral to the General Courts of the Draft Criminal Procedure Law which will include a structural reform of the criminal instruction model, attributing investigations to prosecutors instead of judges.
10. The tenth point of the strategy is the tightening of penalties for crimes against public administration in the Criminal Code and duplication of prescription periods, together with the increase in fines to corrupt companies, calculating them not on the benefits obtained, but about their annual income.
11. The plan continues with the implementation of an exclusion system and “black lists” To prevent corruption convicted of corruption, they can continue to hire with the administration.
12. In twelfth place, it is pointed out that within the parties, hardening of sanctions for accounting infractions and withdrawal of public subsidies to those who keep in their lists, structures or management organs to people convicted of corruption.
The fourth axis seeks the recovery of stolen goods through corruption, and includes two initiatives.
13. On the one hand, the increase in media and template of the Office of Recovery and Management of Assets is expected, responsible for locating and administering the assets obtained illicitly. In parallel, its coordination with courts, prosecutors and the European Prosecutor’s Office will be optimized.
14. In turn, the introduction of the figure of the administrative or preventive confiscation is raisedwhich will allow to seize goods linked to criminal activities without the need for prior criminal conviction, preventing those responsible for hide or have stolen money before justice arrives.
The fifth and last axis implies the generation of a true culture of integrity, and incorporates a final measure.
15. The final initiative seeks to carry out annual democopic studies on the perception and direct experience of corruption in Spainlaunch of citizen awareness campaigns and reinforcement of the training of public employees in integrity and prevention.
“We are going to comply until the last comma,” said Sánchez, announcing an agreement with the OECD to promote a monitoring and evaluation system, which will account for the advances made at 12 and 24 months, and will issue a technical opinion that will be in the public domain.
