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The Ethics and Integrity Directorate (EID) was established by section 4 of the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Act, No. 12 of 2019, as amended by Act No. 1 of 2020. The Directorate started its operations in January 2020.
The Ethics and Integrity Directorate is responsible for promoting and reinforcing integrity and accountability in public office by receiving and analysing declarations of interests, income, assets and liabilities declarations of certain categories of persons; and verifying information contained in such declarations in order to detect corruption, money laundering or the acquisition of property from proceeds of any other offence.
The asset declaration system requires specified categories of persons to make periodic declarations of their interests, income, assets and liabilities. The Directorate is thus responsible for the safe custody of the declarations for monitoring purposes.In addition, the Directorate builds a national culture of ethical conduct and prevents unethical behaviour in public office by developing and promoting a Code of Ethics, standards and best practices for ethical conduct.
The Directorate is headed by a Director-General and a Deputy Director General. It has two (2) major Divisions, each headed by a Director.
The Divisions are:
- Monitoring and Legal Enforcement and
- Asset Declaration and Management.
Monitoring and Legal Enforcement does the following key functions:
- Receipt and assessment of declarations of interests, income, assets and liabilities
- Analysis and verification of information in the declarations
- Keeping the declarations in safe custody
- Maintaining registers of persons who have declared on time and those who have been issued with notices, by the Directorate, as well as persons upon whom administrative, criminal and other penalties have been imposed for failing to comply with the Act
- Monitoring the interests, income, assets and liabilities of a certain category of persons, for the purposes of detecting and preventing corruption, money laundering and acquisition of property from proceeds of any other offence
- Issuing of notices to persons who fail to declare on time
- Imposing administrative penalties on persons who fail to declare on time
- Referring matters to relevant authorities for appropriate action, including criminal action, where necessary
- Investigating suspected or alleged non-compliance with the Act
Asset Declaration and Management includes the following functions:
- Development of guidelines on conflict of interest
- Review of conflict of interest declarations to determine declarants’ adherence to the guidelines.
- Notification of declarants and relevant authorities of actual or potential conflict of interest based on review of conflict of interest declarations
- Development of a Code of Ethics, and overseeing its implementation
- Investigating complaints on any breach of the code of ethics
- Collaboration with other entities on the development and promotion of standards and best practice on ethical conduct
