Anti-corruption legal education: Conflict of interests in the civil service and the procedure for its settlement (part 2)
Typical situation:
Conflict of interest related to the performance of certain functions of state administration in relation to relatives and / or other persons with whom the personal interest of a civil servant is associated.
Description of the situation:
A civil servant participates in the implementation of certain functions of public administration and / or in making personnel decisions in relation to relatives and / or other persons with whom the personal interest of the civil servant is associated.
Prevention and control measures:
The civil servant should notify the personal interest of the employer's representative and immediate supervisor in writing.
The representative of the employer is recommended to remove the civil servant from the performance of official duties involving direct interaction with relatives and / or other persons with whom the personal interest of the civil servant is associated. For example, it is recommended to temporarily remove a civil servant from the composition of the competition committee if his relative is one of the candidates for filling a vacant position in the civil service.
Comment:
The participation of a civil servant in making personnel decisions in relation to relatives is one of the most obvious situations of conflict of interest.
There are many variations of this situation, for example:
a civil servant is a member of the competition commission for filling a vacant position in a government body. At the same time, one of the candidates for a vacant position in this state body is a relative of a civil servant;
a civil servant is a member of the attestation commission (commission for resolving conflicts of interest, commission for conducting an official inspection), which makes a decision (conducts an inspection) in relation to a relative of a civil servant.
At the same time, it should be noted that by no means any performance of government functions in relation to relatives entails a conflict of interest. In particular, if a civil servant provides public services that one applicant does not refuse to provide the service to other applicants, and does not have discretionary powers to give preference to anyone, the likelihood of a conflict of interest in providing such services to relatives in most cases is negligible.