Clash of Interests or How to Conceal the Unconcealed
The speech by Hovik Abrahamyan, RA Prime Minister, at the last week’s session is still being discussed by the public. The PM declared a war on unproductive expenditures of state financial resources, monopolies, corruption and other phenomena, which hinder economy growth.
In particular, he mentioned two directions regarding corruption: firstly, making corruption cases calculable according to the bodies, and secondly, interest clash. “I consider, we need to install hard mechanisms, which will exclude participation of public officers and their relatives in state purchase, as well as programs implemented by state financial resources,” Hovik Abrahamyan said. Interest clash, interest uncovering …Sounds nice. Those interests should have been uncovered long ago, shouldn’t they? Curious coincidence: 7 years ago—14 May 2009, former PM Tigran Sargsyan was touching upon interest clash at the Government session. He was speaking with the same determination and optimism. “We are taking a rather serious step by confirming this draft law, as we are installing an institute for uncovering of interests. It presupposes, that the law creates real mechanisms, so that officials, MPs, ministers didn’t do business, revealed their interests and settled the issues with people related to them, so that the society had the possibility to control that the Constitutional norm is being fully implemented in Armenia. That law has anti-corruption content as well, and we are obliged to install those mechanisms, what we do by adopting this draft law,” he said. Note, it refers on amendments to RA law on “Declaration of property and income of physical persons” and “Civil service” in “RA Criminal code.”
A considerable time has passed: neither corruption has decreased, nor interests have been uncovered. RA law on Civil Service Position was adopted in 2011. Based on that very law in January 2012, upon the decree of Serzh Sargsyan, RA president, the Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials of Armenia was initiated. It was submitted as a serious system change to prevent corruption and restrain the appetite of officials. “Results of the activity of the commission should become criteria for systemic changes for corruption prevention, better possibilities of fight against corruption, as well as change of behavior and social approaches on fight against corruption,” Serzh Sargsyan said at the meeting of newly appointed Commission members.
The Commission has functioned for more than 4 years. What does it do? On their official website we read, “Functions of the Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials include maintenance of the register of high-ranking officials’ and their related persons’ declarations, their analysis and publication, detection of conflict of interests of the high-ranking officials, as well as submission of recommendations on elimination and prevention of conflict of interests and violations of ethics rules of high-ranking officials.” Does anyone recall a single case, when the Commission of Ethics detected cases on conflict interest or violation by the analysis of data?
There is an impression that the function of analysis has been transferred to the press, and the function of respective bodies is justifying the official or making the case sink into the oblivion.
For instance, media outlets examine the declarations and draw some conclusions from its stingy content. They examine, for example, financial resources and incomes of an official reaching millions, then compare them to his/her biography data. And they put forward a question: how can a person not dealing with business throughout his/her life and having worked only in the state system accumulate a property costing millions? What answer does follow it or which steps are taken after it?—none. Suppose that the respective body isn’t obliged to check the source of the money. However, at least, it’s presumed, that serious changes of property and incomes throughout the year or inconsistencies should be examined. It’s not implemented as well, and it’s becoming unclear what authors of the abovementioned statements mean by saying “analysis of declarations of property, incomes and persons related to high-ranking officials.” What do they analyze and how do they handle those analyses, when the officials obviously ignore those declarations?
The high-ranking official doesn’t care for the declaration, which not only copies and pastes the annual data, but even doesn’t preserve simple nuances. For instance, in early 2014 it declares AMD 1000 and AMD 1500 for the end of the year. In 2015 it copies the same numbers, and nobody asks that why the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 are different—they should have been the same.
Or the official declares zero financial resources and the same for the end of the year. During the year it declares only the salary (a few million Armenian drams for the year), i.e. according to the declaration we deal with a person with property, and living by the salary. And the owner of that modest property states in the same declaration, that he/she purchased a luxurious car costing thousands of dollars. And nobody asks: how come? Is it a gift? In this case it should also be enshrined in the document, as the gift should also be declared. Or one of the MPs was given an expensive Mercedes. Who? For what? This is also being unnoticed.
Or the official declares, that a few years ago he/she transferred a few thousand dollars to Artsakh. When we open this year’s declaration, financial resources at the beginning of the year and in the end are the same—less than 100 thousand. And yearly income comprise about AMD 45 million. It turns out that either the person lies and didn’t transfer that amount, or is right, however, he/she didn’t fulfill it in the declaration. Nobody poses this question to him/her. And if asked, he/she will say it wasn’t him/her, and requested it to some neighbor.
These are not baseless conclusions, but concrete examples (although names haven’t been mentioned). And such examples are a lot. And this means that the declaration and its publication don’t raise any reflections or implication. They fulfill it for the sake of fulfillment. This is one of the reasons, why “interests are not uncovered.” And the main reason is the fact that the greatest talent of those touching upon it is concealing apparent phenomena.
By Babken Tunyan
