Today, the Government Decides on Extending the List of Officials with Access to State Secret – the BCC Chairman Is On the List, Too

The Government will examine on Wednesday, March 3, a draft law on modifying and supplementing the Law on State Secret. The initiative was developed by the Ministry of Justice in collaboration with the Information and Security Service. Authorities are intending to extend the list of officials who will have the right to access state secret, for whom authors propose a salary increase of 10%.
 
The draft law proposes “modifying Art. 28 of the law in force and supplementing it with an annex listing the positions whose holders have a special right to access state secret since their appointment (election) to the position, specifying forms of access for every position.”

The chairman of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) is also on the list. Positions with access to state secret also include the chairman of the Supreme Council of Magistracy (SCM), chairmen of courts, as well as heads of certain public authorities, such as director of National Anticorruption Center (NAC), director of the National Center for Personal Data Protection (NCPDP), general director of the National Energy Regulatory Authority (NERA), director of the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology, secretary general of the Presidency of the Republic of Moldova, secretary general of the Parliament, chairman of the Central Electoral Commission, chairman of the National Integrity Authority, chairman of the Competition Council, chairman of the Council on the Prevention and Elimination of Discrimination and Ensuring Equality, general director of the National Food Safety Agency, director of the State Archive Service, general mayor of Chisinau municipality.
 
According to the authors of the draft law, these modifications “are aimed to remove the loopholes existing in the legislation,” since the officials holding these positions “de-facto already deal with the documents attributed to state secret…” but were not on the list of positions with a special right to access state secret.
 
Access to this kind of information presupposes granting of bonuses amounting to 10% of the salary. For example, the BCC chairman will get a salary increase of MDL 650, the director of the NCPDP – an increase of MDL 700, the chairman of the SCM – an increase of MDL 2,500.
 
According to the Explanatory Note accompanying the draft law, the recommendations of the interdepartmental commission for protection of state secret were taken into account when deciding on forms of access.
 
It should be noted that at a press club discussion titled “State and Trade Secret used as a Pretext to Restrict Access to Information of Public Interest”, organized by the Journalistic Investigations Center on February10, the guests voiced their concern of the fact that “nothing has been heard for years” about the interdepartmental commission for state secret, whose last meeting was held in 2014.