Important to Know the Real Owners of Corporations in Order to Fight Corruption, says Expert

Corruption perception in Armenia is not changing. The latter was said today by Transparency International anti-corruption NGO executive director Varujan Hoktanyan during a discussion of the "Corruption Perceptions Index – 2014" report at the Media Center.

“Research is not conducted to measure the level of corruption in Armenia, although in mid-December Armenia will pass a new anti-corruption strategy and will delineate four sectors; health, education, police, and tax bodies. I suggest that the following year should be dedicated to assessing risks, however, as always, the Armenian government is not willing to allocate the necessary funds,” said Hoktanyan. The expert noted that the Armenian government’s philosophy in the fight against corruption is founded on electronic management as salvation.

“I do not agree with this perspective. The term E-corruption is already circulating in English, whereas electronic management sometimes makes the discovery of corruption more difficult,” said the director.

The expert believes, that it is important in the fight against corruption in Armenia to cultivate a strategy in order to reveal the actual owners of certain companies. According to him, there are strategies of revealing the real business owners of companies in Denmark, Great Britain, and in Ukraine.

“Here (in Armenia), they say that the real owner of this place is Kocharyan, or whomever. We’ve applied to the Ethics Committee regarding the private properties of Gagik Khachatryan (Minister of Finance) and Hermine Naghdalyan (National Assembly deputy speaker); naturally, the said that it wasn’t theirs. This is a common phenomenon for developing countries when the actual owners are not revealed. Great Britain, Denmark, and Ukraine are trying to find the real owners of companies. This would also be important for Armenia, because the top cause of corruption is the merging of political and economic elites,” said Hoktanyan.