Corruption Prevention Commission of the Republic of Armenia

On September 2 employees of the Corruption Prevention Commission online participated in the "Whistleblowers of Corruption in Ukraine. successes and challenges" conference.

Representatives of non-governmental organizations, private companies, as well as state departments of different countries participated in the discussion. During the conference, a number of problems related to the optimization of whistleblowing were discussed.

Speaking about the protection of whistleblowers, special attention was paid to the guarantees of their protection stipulated by the legislation, it was emphasized that in this regard it is very important to apply the decisions of the European Council.

Reference was also made to the possible danger of systematic whistleblower. In the given example, a case of systematic whistleblowing was presented, when the same person, systematic whistleblowing about different cases, always received financial compensation. During the regular whistleblowing, criminal proceedings were initiated, and as a result of the investigation, it became clear that the accused person was not guilty, the criminal proceedings were fabricated, the reporting was false, and the whistleblower pursued financial gain.

The speakers presented some precedents in which there were problems regarding the clarification of the status of the whistleblower. In other words, a person's status as a whistleblower or a witness becomes controversial during the trial. Different judges interpret this issue in different ways. in one case, the court gives the person the status of a witness, and in the other case, of a whistleblower.

The representatives of Ukraine, for their part, emphasized that one of the effective means of whistleblowing is through electronic applications. This is evidenced by the fact that 30 percent of notifications in 2021 were submitted through electronic applications. In his speech, the software engineer noted that electronic applications must comply with modern requirements, for example, people must be able to whistleblow through voice messages, or parallel translation must be provided when foreign languages are used.

During the conference, special importance was also given to whistleblowing education in higher education institutions as an important element to promote the system.