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During the year 2022, 1858 cases of corruption crimes were recorded in Armenia. The cases of crimes compared with 2021 have decreased by 66% or 3.4%, which is mainly conditioned by reduction of cases of giving and receiving bribe. At April 21 sitting, of the RA NA Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs, the RA Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan said about this. The report on the activity of the RA Prosecutor General’s Office.

The report consists of 11 sections.

According to the RA Prosecutor General, during the year 2022, the considerable decrease of the number of the initiation of the criminal cases is conditioned by the regulations of the new code of the Criminal proceedings being in force from July 1, 2022.

During the year 2022, the general property damage caused by the materials, criminal cases of corruption character was 2 billion 221 million 849.983 AMD: 873 million 265.480 AMD was restored.

Presenting the work done by the Department of Property Confiscation of Illegal Origin, Anna Vardapetyan informed that during the reporting year the Department received material of 50 criminal cases and 25 materials on the data revealed as a result of operative intelligence measures – on belonging to 84 persons’ possible illegal property.

Touching upon the delayed justice, the key rapporteur presented brief statistical data. During the year 2022, 244 criminal cases, proceedings were terminated on the basis of passing the limitation period. Within the framework of raising the reasons resulting in delayed justice, assignments were addressed to all sub-divisions of the Prosecutor General’s Office: the process of summarizing the results of the assignments began.

The deputy of the Civil Contract Faction Alkhas Ghazaryan considered concerning the cases reaching to suicide and suicide attempt in the financial period increased by almost 60.3%. She asked to clarify the data existing on the causal relationship. Anna Vardapetyan added that the reasons are various – beginning from the depressive certain manifestations ended by gambling.

The deputy of the Civil Contract Faction Andranik Kocharyan inquired about any information on the procedure of the criminal proceedings regarding the most important, non-disclosed October 27 criminal case concerning the society is included in the brief report. “In the draft information on October 27 case it was presented in a way that directly damaged the examination of the case: there were certain assignments, which were given and did not imply coverage. There is no information in the report because of that stemming from the best interest of the examination,” the Prosecutor General noted, adding as RA citizen the two cases of March 1 and October 27 are of priority for her.

Regarding the importance of October 27 disclosure, the Committee Chair Vladimir Vardanyan said: “Why is October 27 important? There is one reason: because the main deformation of democratic development, constitutional development happened as a consequence of October 27. In fact, as RA citizen, as Committee Chair, as Armenian, I demand from you, Mrs Prosecutor General not hunt of witches, but analysis of real results and all circumstances of the case, because for the society October 27, as well as March 1, which with its reasons again goes to October 27, is one of the most important scars, which unless you don’t treat, the public will continue to suffer and to live with it.” According to him, there is no Armenian that does not observe October 27 as encroachment to fully damaging the regular course of the country.

The RA Prosecutor General informed that debates on March 1 case are held every week. She assured that in the near future the examination of October 27 case will also begin: “I think that we have something to say already in the framework of the next report, but not as a promise, but distinctly as already work done.”

Answering the MPs’ questions, Anna Vardapetyan also touched upon the risk problems on the import of medicine, the illegal circulation of drugs, and fight against deforestation.

In her final speech the Prosecutor General answered the MPs’ observations, referred to the resource policy, the whistle-blowing system and the commitments.