The Armenian government’s plans to enact new legislation criminalizing “illegal enrichment” of state officials will seriously discourage corrupt practices among them, Justice Minister Arpine Hovannisian insisted on Thursday.
Hovannisian responded to opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian’s calls for the newly reshuffled government to take two specific measures against corruption, which he described as the root cause of Armenia’s problems.
In written comments circulated on Wednesday, Ter-Petrosian said Prime Minister Karen Karapetian’s cabinet should strip all government agencies of their extra-budgetary funds and ratify a United Nations convention against corruption. The former Armenian president singled out an article of the convention relating to illegal enrichment of officials.
Hovannisian said that Armenia has already ratified the entire convention. She also pointed to government plans to draft within the next three months a law that will make it a crime for any official to use their position to enrich themselves.
“Armenia’s government stands ready to criminalize illegal enrichment in a way defined by that convention,” she said.
The practice is thought to be widespread among high-ranking Armenian government and law-enforcement officials.
When asked by reporters whether she thinks the planned law will reduce the scale of corruption, Hovannisian said: “I can at least say this: such risks and temptations will drastically decrease, if not vanish altogether.”
The Armenian parliament already approved earlier this year a government bill that will give more powers to the State Commission for the Ethics of High-Ranking Officials, a body tasked with preventing or exposing illegal enrichment.
Some 600 officials, including ministers and judges, have for years been obliged to file annual declarations of their and their family members’ incomes with the commission. However, the body has not looked into the veracity of those statements.
Hovannisian questioned the wisdom of a complete ban on extra-budgetary spending advocated by Ter-Petrosian.She said the government should ensure instead that such expenditures are transparent and “not discretionary or arbitrary.”
“I think that right now we have sufficient regulations regarding extra-budgetary spending,” added the minister. “Having said that, this proposal can be discussed and a decision would be made as a result of that discussion.”
Facebook Forum