“There is no political will to combat corruption in Armenia”, announced the head of the organization “Transparency International” Amalya Kostanyan in the National Press Club today.

In this atmosphere of the absence of political will she considers it useless to speak about the combat of corruption in separate spheres. She also criticized the anti-corruption strategy in which, according to her, there is no anti-corruption law, but only a plan of events.

By the way, the inefficiency of the combat against corruption, according to Mrs. Kostanyan, is also accounted for by the absence of an institute calling people to responsibility; even if there are people who are punished, they are from the lower circles; and if we want people to believe in that the combat is real, at least one or two high officials must be punished.

She brought the example of Hungary where the serious combat started only after the imprisonment of a deputy.

Amalya Kostanyan does not exclude the existence of progress. According to her, today’s meeting which would be impossible a couple of years ago comes to testify to the fact that certain measures have been taken which, nevertheless, are not enough to eliminate corruption.

During the meeting the data of the survey held by “Transparency International” were also brought. According to it, 62.9% of the residents of Armenia think that corruption has growth for the last three years. 15.5% think it has been reduced, 17.1% was undecided and only 4.5% thought it has been reduced.

1500 people have participated in the survey.