Council of Europe experts' body on corruption publishes report on Armenia
The Council of Europe’s “Group of States against Corruption” (GRECO) published its evaluation report on Armenia this week, with the agreement of the Armenian authorities. GRECO reports are intended as a European contribution to tackling the scourge of corruption in its 40 member countries. Corruption remains a significant problem in Armenia: a widely used measure of the phenomenon, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, ranks countries from the least corrupt (n° 1) to the most (158). Armenia ranks 88th on this scale, on a par with Iran and Moldova and doing rather better than the Ukraine (107), Georgia (130) and Azerbaijan (137). The lowest ranking among the EU’s current members is Poland (70).
Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 10/03/2006
The Council of Europe’s report concludes that in Armenia corruption
is considered a major problem. The judiciary, the police, the customs
service, the tax inspectorate, education, healthcare, licensing and
privatisations are particularly affected. Despite the adoption of a
number of anti-corruption measures, shortcomings still prevail in the
existing anti-corruption legislation and its implementation, as well as
in the organisation of the justice and law enforcement systems.
The existence of serious obstacles to collecting evidence,
depriving offenders of the proceeds of corruption together with the
almost total absence of significant results in prosecuting and
indicting individuals involved in serious cases of corruption call for
substantial efforts. In this respect, problem areas include legislation
on banking secrecy, special investigative means, training for members
of the law enforcement agencies, witness protection, assets declaration
and the anti-money laundering regime. Immunity enjoyed by judges,
prosecutors, parliamentary candidates, members of electoral commissions
and even candidate mayors and candidates for membership of the council
of elders (local council) is also a matter of concern.
As for public administration, there is an urgent need for
implementing measures that deal with situations where
personal/financial interests or activities may raise issues of conflict
or partiality with regard to public officials’ duties and
responsibilities. It is also necessary that public officials be
informed and, above all, trained on how and when to report instances of
corruption, or suspicions thereof, which they come across in their duty
and, to establish adequate protection for public officials who report
instances of corruption (whistleblowers) in good faith. The Armenian
legal system does not provide for corporate liability, so there is a
need to establish it for offences of bribery and money laundering and
to provide for effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions, in
accordance with the Council of Europe’s Criminal Law Convention on
Corruption.
GRECO has addressed twenty-four recommendations to Armenia and
invited the Armenian authorities to report on their implementation by
September 2007.
Links:
> The Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption report at:
- www.coe.int/T/DC/Press/NoteRedac2006/20060310_greco_en.asp
> See also the Global Corruption Index:
www.transparency.org/policy_and_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2005
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