YEREVAN. – Zhoghovurd newspaper of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: In 2023, the RA Investigative Committee [(IC)] will become the investigative body investigating the most cases of the republic. The thing is that from the beginning of the year 2023, all RA oligarchs will be under the radar of the RA Investigative Committee.

In particular, it became known to Zhoghovurd daily that from January 1, 2023, the function of investigation of economic crimes will be transferred from the RA State Revenue Committee [(SRC)] to the RA Investigative Committee, and the RA SRC will no longer be a body conducting investigation. As a result of this change made on the basis of the relevant legal acts, 55 posts of the RA SRC investigative body are transferred to the RA IC from January 1, 2023.

The above-mentioned change derives from the RA government’s judicial reform and anticorruption strategies approved by the decisions back in 2019, and the programs of measures for their implementation. It is due to the need to abandon the practice of conducting investigations by different investigative bodies on the same type of crimes, to exclude the repetition of functions.

Let's note that the former chairman of the RA Investigative Committee, Aghvan Hovsepyan, during his tenure, was doing everything to have the SRC investigative department separate from the SRC and join the committee, but the former chairman of the SRC, Gagik Khachatryan, won and did not give the right of investigation to someone else in order to keep the oligarchs under his baton. Thus, the RA SRC investigative [department] is also in the hands of Argishti Kyaramyan [Chairman of the Investigative Committee].