Varuzhan Hoktanyan, Executive Director and Khachik Harutyunyan, Anti-corruption Expert of Transparency International Anticorruption Center (TIAC) took part in the regional conference on “Money in Politics” held in Tbilisi on February 18-19, 2016. Varuzhan Hoktanyan made a presentation on “How to effectively increase transparency of political party financing and make politicians more accountable?” and Khachik Harutyunyan was a speaker in a session on “The influence of illicit finance over politics and the relationship between policy making, corporate elites, and organized crime.”

The conference brought together political officials, civil society representatives, international experts and members of academia to discuss practical steps towards improving political finance regulations in Eastern and Central Europe. The discussion revealed that significant challenges still persist in the region as regards to the effective design of regulatory bodies, the monitoring of political finance income and expenditure, mechanisms to increase transparency through better reporting, monitoring of the use of administrative resources, and the promotion of better disclosure of political party funding.

The conference aimed to achieve the following: identify areas of political finance implementation that require reforms, using OSCE/ODIHR and Council of Europe Election Observation Missions’ reports as well as GRECO Reports, and offer suggestions on how to design such reforms; exchange good practices and lessons learned regarding the effective enforcement and monitoring of political finance legal frameworks; identify approaches, mechanisms and procedures for improving the implementation of existing regulations; and contribute to the creation of a regional peer network on political finance.

The conference "Money in Politics," organized in co-operation with State Audit Office of Georgia, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), the Council of Europe, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD), focused specifically on assessing the implementation of existing rules and measures for effectively enforcing party-finance legislation.