State Customs Committee made an initiative to toughen the punishment for attempted to bribe customs officers. According to the SCC management, bringing to administrative responsibility and the imposition of fines for taking bribes in the amount of 20 to 40 basic values would give a chance "to increase preventive effect and to eliminate the background of corruption".
The Customs Committee also draws the attention of citizens, crossing the border, on the inadmissibility of some additional enclosures in the documents required for customs control. «Finding of money in these documents may be considered as an attempt to bribe an official», warned in the committee.
In the SCC also said that on the facts of abuse, extortion and improper behavior on the part of customs officials, the citizens may call the committee helpline: +375 17 2189292.
From the beginning of the year there were 102 attempts to bribe customs officers, SCC
The committee informed that over five months of this year, customs officers stopped 102 attempts of bribery on the part of both individuals and entrepreneurs. Moreover, the same number of case when citizens tried to bribe customs officials was registered the last year. And already this year, there were four criminal cases initiated on the facts of bribing customs officers.
«As a rule, the people, who offered money to customs officials in the documents, during the official proceedings are changing their initial explanations and refer to the fact that the money had got into the documents by accident, or they are used to pay customs duties. In general, amount of monetary remuneration is an equivalent of 5 to 20 dollars», told in the SCC.
In this regard the Customs Committee noted that examining such cases, sometimes the prosecutors make decisions on refusal to initiate criminal proceedings because of insignificance of the done or in the absence of crime in the act.
