The capacity for handling corruption of the institutions of the United States of America will be assessed by experts from Macedonia and Sweden. The USA has the obligation to implement the United Nations Convention against Corruption. The training of the Macedonian and Swedish experts for this responsible and difficult task took place in Vienna on 7-8 October and the evaluation can now begin, Vest reports.

Macedonia and Sweden have been selected by way of a draw. Justice Minister Mihajlo Manevski explained that in order to qualify for performing evaluation, the country has to be ranked higher, or more specifically, be placed in the first third of the global list for efficient fight against corruption. The countries that have been given poor anti-corruption marks and are not conducting an active fight against corruption cannot evaluate others,” Minister Manevski says.

The team of anti-corruption experts from Macedonia to be assessing USA institutions is led by Elena Hristoska and Kiro Cvetkov from the Ministry of Justice. The team also includes the president of the anti-corruption commission, Ilmi Selami, and his colleague Vladimir Georgiev, while Aneta Stancevska has been proposed by the Government as an expert from the Interior Ministry.

The experts from Macedonia and Sweden agreed in Vienna in a meeting with the US representatives that the English language would be the working language of the documents and that there would not be translation into Macedonian and Swedish. The Macedonian and Swedish experts also told their US colleagues that they prefer assessing criminalization and implementation of laws and are also interested in examining extradition, transfer of convicts and providing mutual legal aid.

In the course of this month, the USA should provide Macedonia and Sweden with the self-evaluation report via the UN and Macedonia and Sweden should prepare the evaluation report within a month and provide it to the UN and the USA. A video conference will then be organized at the UN for all three parties involved in the evaluation and the USA will arrange direct communication with the government experts from Macedonia and Sweden having drafted the report. The dialogue will continue until the assessed country, the USA in this case, agrees with all parts of the report.

According to Minister Manevski, the appointment of Macedonia as evaluator of the US capacity for handling corruption is very good for Macedonia’s promotion.

“The USA has joined the campaign against corruption on a global scale as late as now. On the other hand, not only has Macedonia made significant progress up toward the group of the most active countries in fighting corruption, but is also praised in this year’s EC report for having advanced further in the process,” Minister Manevski said.