Conflict of Interest Bill is being reviewed by experts from the Presidential Administration (PA), the Senate speaker Tanzila Narbaeva tol the Uzbek BBC service in London.
MPs of the Legislative Chamber passed the Bill in October 2022, and the Senate approved it on June 1, 2023 and sent it to the AP, but the document has not yet been signed. According to the law, any bill passed by the Legislative Chamber shall be sent to the Senate, which must approve or reject it within 60 days, and the president, after receiving the document from the Senate, is required to take the decision to sign or reject within 30 days.
Tanzila Narbaeva assured that the law will be adopted. “It takes a lot of time. The Presidential Administration has separate groups of experts. They also form their opinion by analyzing current trends in Uzbekistan, the conclusions of legislators, and the international situation. Our president has two options: either return the document or sign it. We are waiting for this now,” she said.
She added that she was not satisfied with the steps taken to combat corruption.
“As long as there is corruption, no one is satisfied with the work being done in this area. We understand that there is still a lot to be done in this regard, since the issue of corruption is raised in discussions within the state, in the media, bloggers, and activists of social institutions,” the senator noted.
She said that according to an analysis of the National Anti-Corruption Council, which she heads, corruption factors have increased in four areas: healthcare, education, construction and the public procurement.
“We want to turn these areas, first of all, into systems free from corruption, using control systems such as digitalization, openness, compliance control and the development of internal rules,” said Tanzila Narbaeva.
Director of the Anti-Corruption Agency Akmal Burkhanov stated that his body had been identifying thousands of cases of conflicts of interest in the civil service, but due to the lack of a legal framework, eliminating such situations is problematic.
In one of the latest cases, the Director of the Directorate for Construction of New Tashkent/Deputy Minister of Construction and Housing and Utilities Davronjon Adilov entered into a direct agreement with Gold Step Invest to create a transport interchange between the capital and New Tashkent. The co-founder of the company may be his relative. The project is estimated at 350 billion soums.
