PARLIAMENT AGAIN BLOCKS GOVERNMENT BILL ON INCOME DISCLOSURE
By Ruzanna Khachatrian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
May 31 2006
The Armenian government again failed to push through parliament on
Wednesday a bill that would obligate all well-to-do Armenians to
regularly declare their personal incomes and other assets.
The bill, which is aimed at complicating widespread tax evasion, has
been bogged down in the National Assembly for nearly two years, meeting
with strong resistance from some wealthy lawmakers. The government
has so far only managed to have it passed in the first reading.
Only 47 of the 131 members of the assembly voted to pass it in the
second reading. The proposed legislation is openly opposed by the
Orinats Yerkir party of former parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian.
One of the nine Orinats Yerkir deputies, Hovannes Markarian, insisted
that “Armenian society is not ready” for mass income declarations.
Also refusing to back it are the 17 ostensibly independent deputies
making up the People’s Deputy group. All of them are wealthy
businessmen loyal to the country’s leadership.
Armen Alaverdian, deputy head of the State Taxation Service, said the
government will again put the bill to the parliament vote soon. “We
have to work with those factions to find out reasons for their
opposition,” he told RFE/RL.
Armenia already has a law on financial disclosure that covers only the
president of the republic, all members of the parliament, ministers
and other senior government officials. But the law has proved largely
meaningless, with most senior officials grossly understating their
assets in annual income declarations filed with tax authorities. The
latter have no right to check the veracity of those statements.
The government bill would extend mandatory income declaration to
all those citizens who earn at least 500,000 drams ($1,160) a month,
or ten times more than the official average salary in the country.
President Robert Kocharian’s former anti-corruption adviser, Bagrat
Yesayan, has been one of the strongest supporters of the measure.
Yesayan has argued that a much broader financial disclosure would
enable the authorities to uncover expensive property which is owned
by corrupt government officials but is officially registered in their
relatives’ names.