A new and more powerful body tasked with tackling corruption in Armenia will be formed before the end of next month in line with a government bill passed by the parliament last year.
The Commission On Preventing Corruption will be tasked with deterring and detecting corrupt practices among senior Armenian officials. It will replace the existing State Commission for the Ethics of High-Ranking Officials that has received mandatory income and asset declarations from the country’s 600 most high-ranking state officials, including ministers and judges, for the last six years.
The new commission will be empowered to not only scrutinize those financial disclosures but also investigate possible conflicts of interest or unethical behavior. It could ask law-enforcement bodies to prosecute officials suspected by it of engaging in corruption or even submitting false declarations.
The commission will consist of five members to be named by a special council that will also comprise five individuals. Each of them will be chosen, starting from April 10, by the opposition minority in the Armenian parliament, the Constitutional Court, the state human rights ombudsman, the presidential Public Council and the national bar association.
Karen Zadoyan, who heads the Armenian Association of Lawyers, said that unlike the outgoing commission the new anti-graft body will have “very serious powers” that will allow it to combat corruption. But he said it could make a difference only if its members are reputedly honest individuals ready to resist pressure from the government or other state bodies.
The same is true for the council that will pick those members, according to Zadyoan. “It is essential to focus attention to the formation of the council so that it consists of spotless, honest and professional people,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) on Wednesday.
Daniel Ioannisian of the Yerevan-based Union of Informed Citizens was skeptical on that score. “You have to be a bit naïve to think that a truly independent council will be formed to choose members of the commission,” he said.
Armenia ranked, ranked, together with Macedonia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, 107th out of 180 countries and territories that were evaluated in Transparency International’s 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released in February.
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