Internet crimes in Armenia
By: Ludmila Goroshko

Computer Crime Research Center, Ukraine
June 22 2004

Most of computer crimes in the banking sphere of Armenia are committed
through the Internet, Olga Safaryan, legal expert of “Internews”
told during seminar “Legal Field of Information Technologies and
Their Correspondence to European Standards”.

She said that these crimes are not solved in Armenia, like anywhere
in the world, because banks try to avoid announcing such information;
they fear to incur reputation damage. Olga Safaryan informed that
these crimes haven’t been prosecuted yet hence they have no special
organization to fight computer crimes in Armenia.

“In my report I suggest, on the analogy of other CIS countries,
to create a department to control computer crimes. At the moment,
it is still not clear who will investigate these crimes if they
occur, and therefore there are no statistics,” she said. Besides,
Safaryan noted that August 1, 2003 a new Criminal Code of Republic of
Armenia came into force, where chapter 24 that consists of 7 articles
is fully devoted to computer crimes. The worst crime is the one
committed through negligence, causing of harm to health or other grave
consequences. It is provided for by article 254, part 4, to establish
6 through 12 years jail for illegal access to computer information.
“However, this article does not define grave consequences that may
lead to problems applying it”, she said.