Sep182020

The Valencian Antifraud Agency recommends to the Valencia City Council improvements in the participatory process “DecidimVLC”

Valencia, September 18, 2020.- The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency has sent the Valencia City Council a recommendation that compiles a set of proposals and good practices to improve the citizen participation process known as “DecidimVLC”.

The recommendation, which is not binding, was motivated by an anonymous complaint through the complaint mailbox in which it was alerted of a possible fraud in the citizen participation procedure for the elaboration of the participatory budgets through which they are decided some investments for the city of Valencia.

Although the AVAF has not observed fraud or corruption in the situation described in the complaint, it has activated a procedure to detect and verify possible aspects susceptible to improvement or good practices, with full respect for local autonomy and without prejudging any irregular actions.

Once certain aspects of the project have been contrasted with the Valencia City Council, the Director of the AVAF formulates a set of recommendations with the purpose of improving transparency and citizen participation in the procedure for preparing the municipal budget (“DecidimVLC”).

The AVAF recommendation includes up to 10 prevention mechanisms that in practice involve implementing a culture of ethics and public integrity.

Among the proposed mechanisms are:

• The need to justify the discrepancies between the amount assigned to this process and the one that appears in the municipal budget.
• Provide a permanent link visible from the City Council website to maximize citizen participation.
• Intensify the publicity campaign about the process.
• Use spaces for face-to-face or telematic deliberation.
• Publish the results of the participatory process and the monitoring of its execution in an open and reusable format.
• Consider in the design and monitoring of the process the proportionality between the number of votes necessary for the selection of investment projects to be executed and the increase in the percentage of effective citizen participation.
• Properly plan the temporal extension of the feasibility analysis phase and increase pedagogical work.
• Include in the regulatory bases of the participatory process some mechanism (such as, for example, responsible declarations, with updating commitments) that allows the detection and subsequent control of the possible existence of conflicts of interest.
• Plan the process of citizen participation in municipal budgets in an integrated / coordinated manner with the planning of the rest of the organization’s areas.
• Enable for future participatory processes a specific channel for complaints or complaints from citizens when they detect any dysfunction in the process.

From the outset, the Valencia City Council has received and valued the recommendation made by the AVAF and has accepted to assess the incorporation of the bulk of the recommendations proposed in the successive participation processes.

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Fecha de publicación: 18/09/2020

Sep152020

The Junta de Castilla y León looks to the AVAF as a model for its future anti-corruption agency

València, September 15, 2020.- The Deputy Minister of Transparency and Quality of Services of the Junta de Castilla y León, Fernando Navarro, together with the General Director of Citizen Services and two inspectors of services, have met electronically with the Director of the AVAF, Joan Llinares, as well as the people who are in charge of legal affairs and analysis and investigation

The reason for the meeting was to continue with the collaboration that began a few months ago when the Castilian-Leon government began to work on the legislative initiative for the creation of a future anti-corruption agency. On that occasion, both the Deputy Counselor and the General Director visited the Agency in person.

The project is currently in the approval phase by the Board before taking it to parliament. For this reason, they wanted to know first-hand the operation of the analysis and investigation area, how the statute of protection of the complainants works and other aspects related to the personnel structure or the distribution of budget items.

For his part, Joan Llinares pointed out that “from the AVAF we are willing to collaborate with all those administrations that want to set up anti-fraud and corruption agencies and we do not hesitate to share our experience and knowledge with them.”

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Aug42020

The General Directorate for Children and Adolescents and the Valencian Antifraud Agency will collaborate to raise awareness against fraud and corruption in children and adolescents

València, August 4, 2020.- The general director of Children and Adolescents of the Generalitat Valenciana, Rosa Josefa Molero, and the director of the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency (AVAF), Joan Llinares, have met to coordinate and design actions aimed at raise awareness against fraud and corruption in childhood and adolescence.

This initiative was proposed by the AVAF Participation Council’s fraud and corruption prevention work group and was subsequently approved by all the associations and social entities that are members of said Council.

After the meeting, the director of the AVAF declared that “among the functions entrusted to the Agency is the prevention of fraud and corruption. We believe that these values ​​should be integrated from the earliest ages and hence the necessary collaboration with those institutions that work with these groups ”.

“If from childhood and adolescence we work to create an ethical conscience of rejection of fraud and corruption, we will be laying the foundations for a more just and integral society,” added Llinares.

In coordination with the General Directorate for Children and Adolescents, it is intended to establish channels for child participation through the network of municipal councils for children in the Valencian Community.

“In this way, we accommodate the premises set forth in the current Valencian Law on childhood and adolescence, which already aims to promote the participation of children and adolescents in the social, political and economic life of their environment, through a progressive incorporation into active citizenship ”, said the general director of Childhood and Adolescence Rosa Molero.

Currently the network of Valencian municipalities with municipal councils for childhood and adolescence covers 37 localities, distributed throughout the territory (8 in the province of Alicante, 6 in the province of Castellón and 23 in the province of Valencia)

Through them, a total of 1,023 boys, girls and adolescents are reached who act as counselors in their respective municipalities.

This initiative will allow the incorporation of children and adolescents as an active group that is incorporated in the development of an ethical conscience of rejection of fraud and corruption.

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