The Corruption Prevention Commission (CPC) in Armenia received a tailored-made technical support from the Council of Europe to help manage the asset declaration process for high-ranking public officials. Several key documents were produced to help the CPC to detect financial irregularities in the declarations as well as to audit declarants’ income and interests.

Along with the previously developed compact guideline, the comprehensive methodology was developed by Council of Europe experts to support the CPC in harnessing the capabilities of a new online asset declaration system which enables the CPC to access a number of databases operated by Armenian authorities. The methodology describes the key steps necessary for the management of declarations, helping the CPC to identify which public officials and their family members’ declarations must be fully audited, how to communicate with the declarants, and how to ensure transparency through the publication of declarations.

The project also developed a procedural step-by-step instruction manual for the CPC staff members in charge of the declaration’s analysis. The manual presents a multi-stage approach consisting of compliance and formal checks, plausibility checks, and audits. The accompanying guidelines provide further analytical methods for internal procedures that shall govern the relevant processes within the CPC in accordance with applicable legal and administrative rules.

This manual together with the methodological tools will enable the CPC to identify any hidden illegal income through an analysis of the public officials’ incoming and outgoing cash flows as well as through cross checks with other sources of information.

All these materials have been prepared in close cooperation with the CPC through a series of online discussions and have been translated into Armenian.

Further technical trainings will be organised by the project to build the capacity of CPC staff to use these tools properly and ensure they are fully able to verify the property, income and interest declarations of high-ranking public officials.

This support is provided within the framework of the EU/CoE Partnership for Good Governance II Project on “Strengthening institutional capacities to fight and prevent corruption in Armenia” (PGGII-ARM) which is funded jointly by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.