EU ambassadors alarm of high corruption risks in Armenia
By Laman Sadigova
The EU has voiced its concerns over increasing corruption risks in Armenia, calling for fighting this disaster in the post Soviet country.
"In a country where both the parliament and the government have a number of businesses, it is impossible to avoid conflicts of interest and corruption risks," news.am quoted head of the EU delegation Piotr Switalski as saying on January 25.
He was addressing the international conference on "National and international efforts in the field of applied ethics", which was organized by the Ethics Commission of senior officials, supported by the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, as well by the Organization of International Cooperation.
Germany's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Bernhard Matthias Kessler, in his turn, continued observations after the EU, and stressed the importance of the fight against corruption existing in Armenia.
“Corruption exists in both public and private sectors. I hear about the lack of confidence of citizens in relation to the management system and the authorities,” he said.
“Civil society must be more involved in the work of independent regulatory authorities, and, finally, politicians do not have to be engaged in business," Kessler added.
Armenian and foreign investors have shunned expanding their business activities in Armenia after realizing that their potential competitors can become ministers, members of parliament, the prime minister, or any other former official.
Complaints about corruption in Armenia, the South Caucasus’ poorest country, are nothing new. The Anti-Corruption Council, created in 2015, is led by Armenian Prime Minister, Hovik Abrahamyan, what calls into question the very idea of this Council.
Armenian authorities created a comfortable system for enriching themselves, forcing people to be silent. Corrupted government is frequently accused of different scandals, but, somehow avoids reckoning.
Civil rights activist Artur Sakunts, believes the funds will be just wasted. “Unfortunately, this is another theatre that leads nowhere unless there is a political will and an independent body to fight corruption,” Sakunts said.
Corrupted and criminal regime in this poor post-Soviet country has a big and strong potential as it owns the entire “stolen” money of the country and surpasses every effort of free speech. And even the tense situation in the country and the crisis, shaking Armenia, cannot convince the government to stop.
Numerous surveys, conducted in Armenia, show that the country’s population have no trust in the authorities. In the situation, when every third lives below the poverty line but the government continues to steal from its own nation, migration is the only way to survive.
However, now even this step will hardly save anyone – Russia, the country which welcomed the majority of Armenian migrants, is infected by the economic crisis and does not need even cheap labor force.
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