Nearly 90 pct of crimes disclosed in first half-year
By Sabina Idayatova
Some 87 percent of reported crimes were disclosed in Azerbaijan in the first half of 2013, the Prosecutor General's Office reported on August 2.
The figures were cited by Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov at an extended meeting devoted to the work of the Prosecutor General's Office bodies in the first half-year, in compliance with the relevant law.
Some 86.9 per cent of 10,929 reported crimes were solved in the country during the reporting period.
According to Garalov, as a result of coordinated work jointly with the interior bodies in the first half of 2013, purposeful work was done to address the negative instances affecting the effectiveness of the fight against crime, further stabilization of the crime rate in Narimanov, Yasamal and Binagadi districts of the capital Baku, and orders were issued to use all the possibilities for solving crimes in Yevlakh and Neftchala.
Garalov emphasized that in this period one of the main challenges facing the Prosecutor General's Office was the question of systematic organization of a tough fight against corruption, which is a dangerous type of organized crime.
In accordance with the political will of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the Anti-Corruption Department under Prosecutor General's Office has done more productive and flexible work, and as a result of the measures taken throughout the country its work has become more advanced. This body has implemented specific measures to strengthen the fight against corruption.
Thus, in the first half of the year, investigation was completed and 100 criminal cases against 200 persons were submitted to court on the basis of 14 appeals from the "hotline". 3,237 appeals were prosecuted under various articles of the Criminal Code and preliminary investigation was completed on four of them, and they were submitted to the courts.
Measures on the improvement of efficiency of investigation work and pre-trial investigation, and elimination of drawbacks in this area also yielded positive results in the first half of the year. Furthermore, the activity of the relevant entities of the Prosecutor's Office, the Ministries of Internal Affairs, National Security, Justice, Taxes, Emergency Situations, the State Customs Committee and State Border Service was also effective.
4,647 criminal cases submitted for further consideration to the courts were finalized. Investigative and operational and searching measures enabled to reveal grave and especially grave crimes committed in past years.
The heads of all agencies, regional and city prosecutor's offices were called upon to step up their efforts and to implement drastic measures for enhancing the sense of responsibility of employees in the mentioned period.
The meeting stressed that the orders of President Aliyev on a thorough approach to the receipt of citizens' pleas, full compliance with the principles of justice are always in focus of the prosecution bodies; furthermore, a number of activities have been carried out for the improvement of work in this area.
However, considering some cases of incomplete and biased review of applications, red tape, baseless decision-making, etc. the heads of pertinent agencies and prosecutors were required to eliminate the negative instances in the near future and broadly use new information technologies.