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Grisha Balasanyan

Who's Fooling Who? Top Officials vs the Top Officials' "Ethics Committee"

Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) MP Karo Karapetyan has pulled the wool over the eyes of Armenia’s  ethics committee tasked to monitor the activities and finances of top officials.. Or, just maybe, the committee is asleep at the wheel.

It all has to do with the financial disclosures he’s filed, and failed to file, with the committee.

In his 2011 revenue and asset disclosure, Karapetyan notes that he’s been a member of parliament since 2012. This is partially correct.

In fact, he was re-elected to the National Assembly this past May, but he’s been an MP since 2007. Had he noted this, he would have been obligated to file financial disclosure statements for his family members as well – his spouse, his parents who live with him, his minor children.

You see, top officials file two types of disclosures – the main one, which is a yearly disclosure, and another that shows the financial assets of the official from the day they assume their post.

Karapetyan has only filed the latter and for some unknown reason the Ethics Committee has decided that the MP’s family members don’t have to file disclosures.

From the way they work, it would appear that the Ethics Committee really isn’t interested in examining these disclosures for inaccuracies and violations. The disclosure we were provided seems to have not been checked beforehand as to whether it was complete or not.

Instead, the Ethics Committee carefully blocked certain information that by law must be publicly available.

A month has passed since we informed the Committee that MP Karapetyan’s disclosure is missing that section pertaining to his family members. So far, they haven’t responded.

It appears that the Ethics Committee has adopted a defensive approach to making the disclosure publicly available.

About one month ago we requested disclosure copies for Ruben Hayrapetyan and his family members. The Committee responded that the disclosures were being finalized, but promised to supply them after the work was done.

As I say, that was one month ago and they’re still busy “finalizing” the information.

So let’s see what MP Karapetyan has disclosed financially as of May 6, when he took office as MP.

He declared 50 million AMD and $108,000 as cash holdings. But his only declared revenue has been his 3.1 million AMD salary.

As I noted above, we have no idea about the finances of his wife Hasmik or his son Vilik. 

Comments (2)

GALUST
Bolor irar chanachum en,avelin mi timic en,enpes vor vochinch harkavor che pahanjel,,,ed handznajoxov@ EVROPAI hamar e miajn
Grish
Vortex karox enq et haytararagrery kardanl????????????????????????????

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