A number of countries and Armenia among them participate in the Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan. These countries are not members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but they are a part of the plan and are monitored by the organization. Every 6 months these states present their country reports on implementation of OECD recommendations.

In addition, there is also the Institute of shadow reports to provide opportunity to the interested non-governmental organizations to present their views on government activities.

On 23-24 March 2015, the regular session was held in Paris, where the RA Government reported on the progress and carried out activities.

According to the AYLA Board Member, Advocate Marat Atovmyan, three NGOs from Armenia presented their shadow reports, “This was unprecedented, as other countries did not have such indicators.”

The monitoring results of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were presented in the framework of discussions on Armenia. According to the report the RA Government did not register progress in 8 from overall 23 recommendations.

“First of all this is Recommendation 8: Strengthen anti-corruption specialization within law enforcement and prosecutorial bodies. It was considered that Armenia had no progress in this direction. The next was Recommendation 9: Ensure comprehensive criminal statistics on corruption-related offenses. It was also considered that the system has not been implemented in Armenia. Then Recommendation 11: referring to ensuring ethics commissions in the public institutions and coordination of their activities. Here also the efforts of the RA Government were considered insufficient. Then comes the conflict of interest procedure,” said the advocate.

According to the advocate no progress was registered in the development of the mechanisms to report corruption and on the protection of whistleblowers.  “There was no progress in the enhancing the role of the Control Chamber. It was considered that Armenia had failed to undertake sufficient steps in that direction. It was also noted that Armenia did not register progress in the issue of discloser of financial data of the political parties. Armenia had failed to meet the final recommendation, assessment of corruption risks involving the private sector and improvement of integrity awareness in business,” Mr. Atovmyan mentioned.

Iravaban.net