Corruption Prevention Commission of the Republic of Armenia

On October 13-14, a workshop entitled " Rolling ut corruption risk assessments” organized jointly with the Corruption Prevention Commission, U4 Norwegian Anti-Corruption Resource Center and the Embassy of Switzerland in Armenia was held at the Congres Hotel.

The Chairwoman of the Commission, Haykuhi Harutyunyan, thanked the Norwegian Anti-Corruption Resource Center U4 and the Embassy of Switzerland in Armenia for the jointly organized conference and close cooperation with the Commission.

The workshop was attended by representatives of the state administration system, non-governmental organizations, as well as the USA, Lithuania, Malaysia and South Korea.

The participants presented the experience of assessing corruption risks in Armenia, the works carried out in this direction so far, talked about the international experience and tools.

"I can easily accept the counterargument that in reality maybe nothing has changed from the point of view of citizens, but I think that it is very natural and can also be a counterargument with its own place, because such kind of large-scale processes do not have immediate results. It's not like the Commission was formed, the citizen could see the result in the next moment, but at least the actions that were taken and are being taken in that direction are evidence of changes and will be visible to ordinary citizens at least in the next year," Haykuhi Harutyunyan assured in a conversation with journalists.

Haykuhi Harutyunyan answered the question of which is the most corrupt system.

"In our opinion, singling out the most corrupt system would be simply naive, because if we consider the rolling of corruption risks as a systemic measure, then it is applicable in the framework of the activities of all state administration bodies, including local self-governing bodies. Therefore, it would be really naive to single out one body or sphere."

The Chairwoman of the Commission singles out several main steps for fighting and preventing corruption: public awareness, checking the behavior of newly appointed officials in state administration bodies.

As a result of checking the integrity of a candidate for a specific judge, prosecutor, investigator, the Commission had the opportunity to prevent the entry into the system of such persons who really have certain problems with their behavior and previous work activities, whose behavior would already turn into corruption if repeated.

In the fight against corruption, Armenia has already recorded its first success: it is an almost formed system of prevention of corruption.

"The risks of corruption in the state system should be revealed. It is often talked about and it is said that it is present in one area and not in another area, but it is necessary to have the methodology at the general system level in order to be able to clearly record what risks there are, where they are and what needs to be done to overcome them,” said a member of the Commission Lilit Aleksanyan.

Turning to the corruption risk assessment methodology, Lilit Aleksanyan noted that the methodology does not exist, because for so long the Commission has tried to understand what is the correct method by which the corruption risk assessment should be carried out.

Watch the full video on the Commission's YouTube page.