Only 124 National Deputies voted on Tuesday for a draft law which envisages mandatory declaration of expenses by high-ranking public officials.

295 parliamentarians, on the other hand, supported a proposal to send the document back for a repeat first reading. Serhiy Vlasenko from BYuT before the vote explained that the document envisaged the declaration of income and expenses of all public officials from deputies of local councils to the President, as well as declaration from members of their families.

“If we pass this law, a judge will not be able to come to the court in a Mercedes and claim that the Mercedes belongs to his mother-in-law or mother who worked all her life as a teacher in a village school”, he said.

During the discussion, one National Deputy from the Party of the Regions, Ivan Bernidubov, said that the document could not be supported since it proposed too broad a range of people needing to make such declarations and too great a list of items to be declared.  Oleh Zarubinsky from Lytvyn’s Bloc called the draft law flawed.

Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Lytvyn said that such proposals are often tabled to put the other side in the position where they need to justify themselves. He said that the law affected all National Deputies, and that they should pass laws in the interests of the country and not for political battle.

As stated, the bill did not receive enough supposed.

The Deputies also sent for a repeat first reading a draft law on conflict of interests in the activities of public officials (No. 4420) which also envisages public officials declaring not only their income, but also expenses, and a draft law on the rules of professional ethics in the public service (No. 4420-1) which proposes defining conflict of interests in order to prevent the use by officials of their official position for personal ends. It also proposed prohibiting officials from receiving valuable gifts.

294 National Deputies voted to send them back for a repeat first reading.