House delays wealth declarations bill vote
The House on Thursday postponed for a week a scheduled vote on a bill regulating the submission of capital statements, or wealth declarations by state officials, politically exposed persons and MPs.
The vote on the bill was supposed to take place on Thursday, but during a meeting of party leaders it was decided to delay it to July 11.
The July 11 session of the plenum will be the last before the House breaks for the summer recess.
The bill – being debated for three years now – will create a new framework governing the filing of capital statements. It aims to tweak several issues, such as the timeline for filing such wealth declarations, who will check them, and when they’ll be published.
One major change involves tax authorities checking the capital statements before they are published. Currently, the statements filed by MPs are ‘checked’ by a three-member parliamentary committee.
As the bill stands, wealth declarations should be filed within four months of a person’s appointment. And within 15 days after filing, the declaration will be forwarded to the Tax Commissioner. The declarations themselves would get published 30 days after the filing deadline.
Also, the wealth declarations will stay posted for as long as a person holds the office, and for a year after they leave that post.
The latest drive to ‘fix’ the wealth declarations situation began in 2021, when as usual none of the statements submitted were properly checked, with MPs failing to complete the forms correctly, leaving out information as they chose.
Commenting on the matter on Thursday, independent MP Andreas Themistocleous said the multitude of amendments drafted by the parties would make a mess of the legislation.
He also opined that the proposed law goes too far.
“It will mean that persons subject to these checks will have to declare furs, jewelry, even chocolates bought from kiosks,” Themistocleous said.
“All this will drag our spouses and our children through the mud, just so that a dozen journalists and neighbourhood gossipers can get their kicks.”