ARMENPRESS. Two new anti-corruption bodies will be created in Armenia soon, one of them will be dealing with the assessment of assets of officials, including judges, PM Nikol Pashinyan said at a news conference when asked by ARMENPRESS to comment on the process of the so-called vetting in the judiciary.
“The Supreme Judicial Council composition has significantly been supplemented, and basically an anti-corruption strategy has been formed where the process called vetting is described. We simply decided not to use that word by understanding that the “vetting” name is getting focused on more than its content. But the mechanisms are placed within the anticorruption strategy and soon we will create two anti-corruption bodies. One of them will deal with the assessment of property capacities of judges and other officials. The other commission, which must work with the Supreme Judicial Council, must deal with the assessment of professional capacities,” the PM said.
He also said that he finds the problems regarding the judiciary to be pressing. According to the PM they’ve reached a conviction as a result of serious discussions that they must take surgical but institutional steps.
“Our purpose is to eventually have an independent judiciary, so it doesn’t turn out that we have replaced the judiciary depending on the former authorities with a judiciary depending on our judiciary. This is not what we want to do. And, pardon me, the most defective problems Armenia is facing come from the judiciary,” he said.
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Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
