This car in the picture is made in Germany and is 7th class BMW. This car is a “first class” model car and its price is over $100k. Though some of you may wonder what that has to do with the article, it will be clear at the end of it.
It is not a secret for us that one of the main problems in Armenia is corruption. According to official information as a result of corruption violations and crimes our state lost over 3,5 billion drams.
In 2003 Armenia adopted an anti-corruption strategy project and a commission was founded headed by RA prime-minister Andranik Margaryan. In April, 2004 a department was founded in the public prosecutor’s office struggling against corruption. And before that Armenia had joined the group of European countries struggling against corruption (GRECO).
The specialists of this group evaluate the corruption risks of the countries that want to join them and provide necessary support. The evaluation is carried out vie two phases. During the first phase the country that wants to join them has to answer to the questions prepared by this organization beforehand, and then a group of experts visits that country and studies the legislation, its application, effectiveness, etc. Armenia has already passed these two phases. They made a report about Armenia in March, 2006. Yesterday this report was presented to journalists by the head of the official representation of Armenia in GRECO, Arthur Osikyan, and advisor on corruption issues to the RA president, Bagrat Esayan.
In fact no one had any serious expectations from them. Usually citizens of our country are more informed about this than any expert. Anyway after these two phases of evaluation our country was given a list consisting of 24 points, which are about the steps that Armenia should take.
The first point is already amazing: “For the purposes of getting more clear and concrete information about corruption and making the program more effective the RA Government should conduct certain analysis”. This means that our authorities don’t know who are corrupted and they have to find them… But most of them can find who are corrupted each morning only by looking in the mirror.
There are recommendations too: “organize trainings so to enable officials inform the relevant bodies about the cases of corruption and violators they have found out”. In other words the purpose of these trainings is to enable officials give information to the relevant bodies, which will not be effective for sure.
As well as we can hardly believe that the program of “protection of witnesses” will work here, which we have seen in American films.
Most of the recommendations concern legal amendments. Reporters were interested in it more. But is this the main reason for corruption? According to Bagrat Esayan there is no sense to speak about corruption without adequate law. It is worth also mentioning that the recent report of the U.S. Department of State wrote about drug transportation and as well as corruption in Armenia. The report writes that the main obstacle for struggling against these problems is the lack of political will. The president’s advisor doesn’t agree with this.
As well as the GRECO group of specialists think that the law doesn’t work well here: “In spite of the fact that there have been certain anti-corruption actions, and some have yet to be taken, there are still problems in the system connected with the law, anti-corruption legal requirements and organization of the judicial system”.
As for our officials, according to them they have registered serious developments during these last two years in struggling against corruption. For instance according to Aghvan Hovsepyan the number of corruption crimes they have investigated in 2005 covers 371, which is more for 18 cases than during the previous year. This was spoken also during the press-conference yesterday. 97 out of these 371 are officials, but there are no high ranked officials among them. Experts didn’t ignore this fact either: “…There isn’t almost any information about finding and punishing serious cases of corruption. On the basis of this we may assume that there is still much to do in this field”.
According to Mr. Esayan it is also important to adopt law on registering the property and income of physical persons. Currently there is such law for state officials. Though according to this law this information is to be open for public, it is a big problem to get such information and in these conditions we may assume that this low doesn’t work in a duly manner because people don’t have any opportunity to get this information. According to him it is important to have such a law because a lot of officials register their property in the name of their relatives. And according to him in case of registering the property of physical persons this problem will be solved. In other words Mr. Esayan is optimistic.
“In fact there are thousands of people who don’t declare their property, this is absurd”, says Mr. Esayan. Of course it is absurd, but it is absurd too that he has learned this just the recent times. It seems that this law was not adopted in our parliament, but somewhere in African and was brought here later.
They spoke also about the presents of state officials. According to the law state officials have a right not to register the presents they have received, which price doesn’t exceed the sum equal to their salaries multiplied to five. But it is not written how often they can accept presents. This means that a state official that gets 100.000 dram per month can accept presents with worth of 450.000 dram many times a day. This provision should be amended too because it is directly connected with the provision on giving bribe. In other words this existing law allows state officials grab little, but often. For instance in England according to the relevant law everything that is not possible to eat during 24 hours is considered to be bribe.
Now let’s write about the car shown in this picture. The head of the RA taxation board has this kind of car. It is more important to note that the main function of the RA general prosecutor is not organizing dances or tree planting, but struggling against crime, as well as against corruption. As for his car, it is not cheaper than this one; it is a “Volkswagen Phaeton” model car. We wander whether Mr. Hovsepyan has bought this car with his salary or the money provided by the budget. If it was presented, it contradicts the law we wrote here, of course if this car was not presented by parts. We also wonder whether the experts of GRECO have ever been interested in where the “servants” of people live, what kind of houses they have and what kind of cars they drive.
Anyway, it is not bad to amend the law. Anyway, ARF representative Bagrat Esayan was optimistic and sure that this law will be brought up in the parliament because “we have a coalition that is ready for struggling against corruption”. He also asked to pay attention to who will be against this law, as well as added that the “people’s deputy” parliamentary group had rejected this law. It is worth also mentioning that this law, that is included in the NA agenda since 2002, has been rejected by “Rule of Law” too, which is also a part of the coalition. Because it seems that everyone wants to struggle against corruption except of the “people’s deputy” group. We asked about this from the head of this group, Karen Karapetyan, “We think that everyone’s income should be registered but this process must be driven slowly if we don’t want to have a corrupted society. This issue has a social factor too. During the discussion our group rejected this law because we recommended doing this first of all for rich people than for citizens”, said Mr. Karapetyan and added that if the draft was presented in the same format they would reject it again. It is also worth mentioning that the explanations of the “people’s deputy” and “Rule of Law” parliamentary groups were the same and meanwhile logical. What if there is no coalition after the elections of 2007? Mr. Esayan doesn’t worry about this either: Kocharyan will not be the president in 2008.
In other words the GRECO group has given us 18 months. We hope ARF representative Bagrat Esayan will make efforts to struggle against corruption in Armenia. For instance he can take part in the trainings organized by GRECO and then inform the relevant bodies about the income and bribery of his party members and their relatives. If not, as the reporters said, if Armenia didn’t meet these 24 points, it would have serious problems with the GRECO and EU. Probably as serious as we had after the elections of 2003 and the referendum of 2005.