Strengthening anti-corruption legislation in Armenia: current drawbacks and elimination perspectives

Abstract

Examination of anti-corruption commitments and review of institutional capacity of respective state entities indicates that Armenia triggered by its international obligations undertakes conceptual regulatory readjustments aimed at scattered legislative approximation. Moreover, a significant inadequacy in the law enforcement real-time practice, such as selection process of possible corruption cases to be prosecuted entails wide scales of arbitrary approaches. The inaction towards non-compliance or conflict of interest’s situations illustrates that the principle of impartial examination is biased. The absence of fact-based preventive or detective regulations not only impair investigative skills of independent officials and media outlets, but also deficiency of standardized compliance framework contributes to the arbitrariness while selecting a suspicious case for examination. Even though, personal income declaration submission is aimed at corruption prevention and detection of possible fact of illicit enrichment, and serves as a fact-based policy measure, the decision to further investigate depends on various “criteria” and “permission”. Thus, not all non-compliance issues are priority for extensive considerations. Absent enforceable sanctions for non-compliance with established anti-corruption rules provide a wide margin for non-compliance elaborations. Although, legislation permits to collect information, furthering on suspicion acts is not mandatory. It may seem, that a prosecution can be enforced if there is a “political will”: Therefore, non-compliance cases may remain unrevealed and unaddressed. My paper through revealing deficiencies in current enforcement mechanisms suggests enforceable amendments in law-abiding current procedures. Proposed legislative solutions consider perpetual, appropriate and reasonable control system as a step towards adoption of mandatory compliance standards making “sponsorship re-adjustment” reckless.