Bolivia: Ministry Of Justice And Institutional Transparency Created Following Merger

The Ministry of Institutional Transparency and the Fight against Corruption and the Ministry of Justice were merged through Supreme Decree 3058 on January 22, 2017. The decree modifies certain articles of Supreme Decree 29894 for the Organization of the Executive.

Among the changes that Supreme Decree 3058 establishes are:

" Combining of the Ministry of Institutional Transparency and the Fight against Corruption and the Ministry of Justice, resulting in the creation of the new "Ministry of Justice and Institutional Transparency," which now has the attributions of both ministries.

" The creation of a new Vice Ministry of Institutional Transparency and Fight against Corruption under the supervision of the new ministry.

While the previous Ministry of Institutional Transparency and Fight against Corruption had two Vice Ministries under its supervision (the Vice Ministry for Prevention, Promotion of Ethics and Transparency, and the Vice Ministry for the Fight against Corruption), the attributes of both ministries have now been granted to the new Vice Ministry of Transparency and Fight against Corruption, which will supervise two offices:

a. General Office for Prevention, Promotion of Ethics and Transparency; and

b. General Office for the Fight Against Corruption.

Furthermore, in Presidential Decree 3059, President Evo Morales designated the new ministers to take office for a new term on January 23, 2017, and designated Hector Enrique Arce Zaconeta as the Minister of Justice and Institutional Transparency. Mr. Arce will replace both Virginia Velasco Condori as Minister of Justice and Lenny Valdivia as Minister of Transparency and the Fight against Corruption, who both had been appointed in January 2015. Lenny Valdivia is now the new director of Authority for Financial System Supervision (ASFI), a position she had previously held between 2011 and 2015.

Going forward, it remains to be seen how this change will affect anticorruption enforcement efforts and the focus of initiatives in the Transparency and Anti-Corruption area that until now had been conducted by the Ministry of Institutional Transparency and the Fight against Corruption.

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