December 9 is International Anticorruption Day. On that occasion Varuzhan Hoktanyan, Executive Director of Transparency International Anticorruption Center (TIAC) participated in a discussion in Media Center. He presented the state of corruption in Armenia. According to Varuzhan Hoktanyan, corruption perception can be assessed based on the indices of three main organizations (Transparency International, World Bank, Freedom House) which has correlation with real level of corruption in the given country. Other speakers of the discussion were Suren Krmoyan, Deputy Minister of Justice; and Karen Zadoyan, Head of the Armenian Association of Young Lawyers, Coordinator at the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Civil Society Organizations spoke on the anti-corruption strategies and the current situation in Armenia.

Transparency International Corruption Perception 2015 Index (TI CPI) will be released in January 2016. Armenia’s 2014 CPI score is 37 (on a scale of 0 - 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and a 100 means that a country is perceived as very clean). According to Freedom House’s Nations in Transit 2015, Armenia’s corruption rating slightly improved in 2012 and till 2014 remained unchanged at 5.25, given that countries are rated on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the highest and 7 the lowest level of democratic progress. The same goes with World Bank indicators. In the latest 3 years there were slight improvements in 2014 - 51.7.

Varuzhan Hoktanyan also addressed conduct of elections, since political corruption is best revealed in elections, including the latest referendum. The observers recorded numerous cases of electoral violations and fraud. These are manifestations of political corruption, due to which anticorruption strategy might be discredited. Hence, development of a new electoral code and practice change is a challenge. As a result of such referendum public support might not be applied as an anticorruption policy component. If clear assessment is not made and respective sanctions are not applied, the society would consider any measure taken for the implementation of anticorruption strategy as not serious.

See press release of Media Center.