The parliament is considering a bill to implement integrity checks within law enforcement agencies and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Such testing has been successfully utilized in the USA, the UK, Australia, Romania, Georgia, and Moldova, stated Daniyar Bigaydarov, the official representative of the Anti-Corruption Agency, during a briefing.
“The mechanism is based on assessing an employee's reaction to a simulated illegal situation, thus testing their resilience to corruption and tendency to violate official duties. Moreover, in global practice, integrity checks have been introduced as part of a broader policy of humanization, given that criminal liability is not applied,” - said Daniyar Bigaydarov.
Integrity checks are proposed to prevent systematic violations of official duties and ethical standards.
It is expected that the security services of each agency will conduct the testing. The verification process will be documented through covert audio recordings.
The anti-corruption agency noted that the bill outlines the rights and responsibilities of both the individuals being tested and the testers, the grounds for initiating checks, and legal safeguards against potential abuses by the testers.
If an employee fails the test, they will face disciplinary action depending on the nature of the violations (warning, reprimand, severe reprimand, notice of insufficient service compliance, demotion in rank or class, dismissal), with the type of penalty determined by the disciplinary commission.