“God has created me to help you”, – this is an episode from the operative video record of National Security Service. The main role player is judge of the RA Court of General Jurisdiction of Lori marz Khachatur Khachatryan, who was arrested at the very moment of taking the bribe. National Security Service made an official announcement about this.
What does the bribe look like in the frames of public figures and representatives of juridical system?
Iravaban.net has examined the cases initiated by Special Investigatory Service on giving or receiving a bribe.
The lowest bribe
In 2012 Bakur Avetikyan, the chief inspector of Shengavit Department of Yerevan Administrative district of the RA Police, carrying out his of duties saw that citizen H.M. was rebuilding a tin-covered part of a fence into a stone wall. Finding out that the citizen was carrying out a construction without an appropriate permission demanded a bribe of beer-treat nature, with the mediation of K.H.
Then he demanded 100.000 AMD bribe, but the citizen fall into range and went to workplace of the policeman and clashed with him. Anyway, Bakur Avetisyan was sentenced to prison for 4 years and 6 months. So corruption within public bodies and juridical system differs, starting with beer-treat and finishing with 20.000 USD.
Who and when?
Our studies show that since 2012 Special Investigatory Service has initiated 33 criminal cases on bribe episodes.
Within the frames of these cases several public individuals were accused for demanding and receiving a bribe:
What do experts suggest?
What to do for public figures to work in a more scrupulous way? Anti-Corruption seminars and trainings are held for them, but according to Marat Atovmyan, the lawyer and local expert of “Anti-Corruption Multi-Faceted Promotion” project, those seminars are not effective: “only 2 lessons lasting for 2.5 or 3 hours may be allocated. Some educational establishments that educate the future law authorities, introduce lessons on ethics and ant-corruption programs,” – said the expert.
By the way, the example of China may be brought, where Chinese officials and their wives were taken to a excursion in one of the city prisons with the aim to prevent corruption. The officials visited the wards of the persons imprisoned for corruption crimes. The officials met 15 ex-officials accused for corruption.
Passing to our reality, lawyer Samvel Jaghinyan assured that positive tendency of anti-corruption struggle is noticed in prosecution. “In Prosecutor’s office corruption theme is closed. Previously there have been conversations that agreements with prosecutors were made by means of a bribe, but presently there are no such conversations. Both prosecutors and inspectors do not have such interrelations. If anybody does so, this is not the system but the individual who acts so, and another question is whether he will digest it or not”, – told the lawyer.
As a rule there are high salaries in systems where there is no corruption, Officials are away from it and in this case, according to Mr. Jaghinyan there is a different picture: “They do not let, prohibition and punishments are set. Formerly it was arranged up to the “ups” and the money would be shared, but today there is no such a thing because in that case by all means there will be punishments. I know it is forbidden, they are concerned in revealing the problems, it is clear-cut from the work nature”, – said the lawyer.
Note: The suspect or the accused of the alleged offense is deemed innocent unless his or her innocence is proved by virtue of the effective court verdict in the manner prescribed by the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia.
Gevorg Tosunyan
