For knowing which countries the Ethics Committee of Senior Officials visits and what kind of “experience” they get, we send three requests.
Thus, everything started from the material nothing saying from first sight. The citation of the first part: “The delegation of the Committee participated in the seminar “Conflict of interests, income and property declarations by public service regulations in Armenia organized by the World Bank for the developing the analyzing capacity of declarations” and etc. If we look at this case form the journalist point of view you will see that it is incomplete which means that the principle of “5Ws” does not maintain wholly: Who, What, When, Where, Why.
Mainly, the material did not give basic information such as where the members of the Committee had been, who the members of the Committee were and when the meeting took place.
The answer of the first request was that the members were in Washington DC, the USA and had meetings; it was found out that President and three members were at the meeting from April 29 till May 1.
This Committee had four members in April; the fifth member-Edgar Shatinyan- was appointed on that position by the Decree on June 13. This means that the Committee was abroad. Basically, the Committee was out of country; but was there any need in that body in those days?
Anyway, by the second request we tried to specify whether the members of the Committee visited other countries besides the USA. The answer in the request was that there was a visit; the Committee did not only have meetings in the USA, they had meetings in Argentina as well. The third request showed that in the framework of the visits to the USA and Argentina the Armenian delegation was in Washington DC, the USA from April 28 till May 1, 2015 and from May 3 till May 8 they were at Buenos Aires, the Argentine Republic.
The question arises why the Committee hides the information of its visits so hard; it is the same thing when some Deputies hide their properties form this Committee. Judge by yourself how it works open and transparent.
Gevorg Tosunyan
Iravaban.net