Payments for the purpose of restitution of damage caused to the state and communities must be made to a single treasury account during the pre-trial proceedings in criminal cases.  The RA Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan announced today during the first meeting of the interdepartmental working group established for this purpose by the decision of the RA Prime Minister.

Representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Anti-Corruption Committee, the National Security Service, the State Revenue Committee, and the Investigative Committee took part in the meeting.

Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan welcomed the participants of the meeting and informed that by the end of the year, the working group should present to the Prime Minister’s staff a conclusion on the organization of the process of having a single treasury account with financial and legal components, for the recovery of damage caused to the state and communities. “The question is very important, we should all be interested in creating a joint account as soon as possible, so that, as the Prime Minister of RA has mentioned many times, every year we have a resume of the total sum of damages caused to the state, and it is also reflected in the revenues of the state budget as well,” Anna Vardapetyan emphasized.

Armen Marukhyan, Head of the Department Organization, Supervision and Legal Assistance of the Prosecutor General’s Office, presented to the working group the results of the study conducted in connection with the existing regulations for the recovery of damage caused to the state and communities and the identified problems that hinder the management and accounting of the recovered money.

In particular, studies have shown that the damage caused to the state or communities investigated in the criminal proceedings by the competent bodies, is restored to the deposit accounts of various pre-investigation bodies or the prosecutor’s office, to the recovery of damage caused to the state and joint accounts of the SRC. “In some cases, the damage caused is restored to the account of the organization to which the damage was caused by the crime, and often the damage caused by the criminal proceedings investigated in one pre-investigation body is restored to the deposit account of another pre-investigation body,” the Head of the Department informed.

During the meeting, the representatives of the state bodies referred to the issue of introducing an effective mechanism for the recovery of damage caused to the state and communities, in parallel, to start an inventory of the money transferred to various state bodies for this purpose over the years, orders were also given, and deadlines were set.

The meetings of the working group will be continuous in order to ensure that the deadline set by the Prime Minister’s decision is met.