Deputy Minister of Justice presents to international counterparts successes recorded by Armenia in the anti-corruption field

On 20 May, First Deputy Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Kristinne Grigoryan participated in the high-level meeting of the EU Eastern Partnership programme "Promoting Integrity Reform Agenda in the Eastern Partnership". The programme is implemented jointly by the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development and the Open Government Partnership.

Deputy Minister Grigoryan expressed gratitude to her counterparts for the invitation to the event and presented the institutional successes achieved by the Government of Armenia in the anti-corruption field, which were recorded after the launch of the ambitious Anti-Corruption Reform Strategy adopted in 2019.

Among the successes recorded, the First Deputy Minister singled out the expansion of the scope of officials submitting declarations, the amount of money recovered in corruption cases examined and completed in the courts over the last three years
(EUR 100 million, when 3 times less funds were recovered in the similar cases in the previous nine years). The mechanisms introduced for verifying integrity of candidates for judges, prosecutors and investigators, as well as the property statuses of judges, which, according to the Deputy Minister, have been applied for only 12 months, but prove their effective, balanced nature. Nevertheless, Kristinne Grigoryan noted that the strategic goal of the Government is to form an institutional system for combating corruption and establishing strong, independent institutions engaged in the prevention, investigation and prosecution of corruption cases. In this context, the Deputy Minister informed that the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption is already functioning, the Anti-Corruption Committee will function at the end of this year, whereas from 2022 — the Anti-Corruption Court. "At the same time, we established a specialised department within the General Prosecutor's Office, which deals with civil forfeiture of illegal assets", said the Deputy Minister and attached importance to the results of the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International, according to which Armenia has improved its rating by 14 points over the past two years.

Summing up, Kristinne Grigoryan stressed that there is still a lot of work to be done, and co-operation with a healthy and viable civil society and international counterparts is also important for the achievement thereof.