Liana Sayadyan
Edik Baghdasaryan

Hetq has received letters to the editor from representatives of the two German foundations in response to our recent articles.

In his letter, Gunther Fichtner, regional representative of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, describes his organization's mission and projects in detail. He writes, "We cannot work without local partners in any country, including Armenia . Along with parliamentary and government institutions, our partners also include scientific institutions, local mass media, and of course, Armenian non-government organizations."

He says that the Friedrich Ebert foundation chooses it partners according to the demands of the given project: "There are no partners with whom we work constantly based on a contract, we choose partners each time, depending on the topic at hand."

As Fichtner describes it, the Ebert Foundation's largest partner in Armenia is the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The Center for Constitutional Rights was established at the beginning of 1997 and is presided over by the president of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia . It is a non-governmental research organization with more than a 100 members including prosecutors, advocates, judges, renowned lawyers, associate professors, and even a former minister of justice. Since 1997, we have implemented about 100 programs aimed at legal development with this partner to date. Besides this, we have discussed, on various events occasions, the implementation of various international legal conventions, contracts, and legal norms in the code of law of the Republic of Armenia , and finally, the correlation of laws with those of Western Europe regarding, for example, money laundering, as a means of bringing the Republic of Armenia closer to Europe."

But Arushan Hakobyan, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says Fichtner is lying. When we read the quoted excerpt from Fichtner's statement to Hakobyan in his office, he underlined the reference to the 100 programs, wrote "This is a lie," and signed the page.

He said that only once, in 1997, did the Ebert Foundation participate in a conference organized by the center. Since 1998, the Center for Constitutional Rights has not collaborated on any programs or events with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

We are not sure why the German foundation's representative in the South Caucasus provided us with inaccurate information. 100 programs is a large number of programs, and a correspondingly large amount of money must have been paid out to implement them. If the Center for Constitutional Rights hasn't been working with the Ebert Foundation, then where has that money gone? We are sending a copy of this article to both the central office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Embassy of Germany in Armenia , in the hope that they can help us answer this question.