Western Watchdog Slams Armenian Anti-Corruption Official
8, November 2005
Armenia Liberty
By Emil Danielyan
Transparency International criticized on Tuesday an aide to President Robert Kocharian for questioning the Berlin-based anti-graft watchdog’s latest global report which suggests that government corruption in Armenia has increased in recent years.
Armenia ranks 88th out of 146 nations that are covered by Transparency International’s 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released last month. The previous survey, released a year ago, put it in 82nd place.
[...]
Bagrat Yesayan, who advises Kocharian on anti-corruption initiatives, cast doubt on the credibility of those studies last week, saying that measuring the scale of corrupt practices is a bad idea in the first place. “Corruption is a phenomenon which is impossible to measure, just as it is impossible to measure love and other phenomena,” he said.
In a letter to Yesayan obtained by RFE/RL, Transparency’s director for Europe and Central Asia, Miklos Marschall, insisted that the situation with corruption in Armenia “does not seem to be improving.” [...].
Marschall defended the methodology of Transparency’s rankings which take account of at least three studies conducted by other Western organizations in a particular country. [...].
The latest Transparency report came almost two years after the Armenian government publicized a plan of mainly legislative actions that are meant to reduce the scale of bribery, nepotism and other corrupt practices.[...]. [...]official statistics [...] show{s} a 15 percent rise in the number of corruption-related crimes identified and solved by the authorities in the first half of 2005. But [...] {does not} identify any of the individuals purportedly punished for corruption.
[...]
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Armenia Liberty
By Emil Danielyan
Transparency International criticized on Tuesday an aide to President Robert Kocharian for questioning the Berlin-based anti-graft watchdog’s latest global report which suggests that government corruption in Armenia has increased in recent years.
Armenia ranks 88th out of 146 nations that are covered by Transparency International’s 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released last month. The previous survey, released a year ago, put it in 82nd place.
[...]
Bagrat Yesayan, who advises Kocharian on anti-corruption initiatives, cast doubt on the credibility of those studies last week, saying that measuring the scale of corrupt practices is a bad idea in the first place. “Corruption is a phenomenon which is impossible to measure, just as it is impossible to measure love and other phenomena,” he said.
In a letter to Yesayan obtained by RFE/RL, Transparency’s director for Europe and Central Asia, Miklos Marschall, insisted that the situation with corruption in Armenia “does not seem to be improving.” [...].
Marschall defended the methodology of Transparency’s rankings which take account of at least three studies conducted by other Western organizations in a particular country. [...].
The latest Transparency report came almost two years after the Armenian government publicized a plan of mainly legislative actions that are meant to reduce the scale of bribery, nepotism and other corrupt practices.[...]. [...]official statistics [...] show{s} a 15 percent rise in the number of corruption-related crimes identified and solved by the authorities in the first half of 2005. But [...] {does not} identify any of the individuals purportedly punished for corruption.
[...]
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 8:04 AM
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