The first three months Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s leadership have seen the former Central Bank chairman emerge as a new voice against Armenia’s old problem of corruption.

Amid praise from the progressively minded, and charges of “showing off” from the perennially malcontent, Sargsyan has repeatedly spoken of his aim to clean up the system of bribery and shadowy deal making.

“We have thousands of corrupt officials. We have 2,000 tax collectors in the tax agency, and 200,000 more dreaming of taking the position not because they are ready to honestly serve the country but because they see it an opportunity to get rich easily,” stated Sargsyan during the government session on June 26th.

The session of the RA council to fight against corruption discussed the issues related to the anti-corruption strategy and the measures of its implementation in 2008-2012 as well as the results of the monitoring of corruption crimes, and the legislative amendments aimed at reducing the circle of officials enjoying immunity.

Gevorg Mheryan, assistant to the President of Armenia and chairman of the anti-corruption strategy implementation monitoring commission mentioned our country is in the most favorable condition in terms of the overall level of corruption among the CIS countries, but lags significantly behind the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

Qualifying the index no consolation, Sargsyan harshly criticized the total corruption of the system that sometimes reaches absurdity.

“Last week we took part in the funeral of one of our chess grandmasters. He is a renowned, talented chess player; the chairman of the chess federation is the President of the republic, I am the deputy chair, which means, everyone is well aware we are in immediate contact to that talented chess player. However, no one appeared to be constrained in taking a bribe of $2,000 to provide a place in the cemetery,” Sargsyan said, annoyed, calling on the heads of agencies to watch attentively what enters the pockets of their subordinates and where the income originates from.

However, the leader of the opposition Levon Ter-Petrosyan spoke about Sargsyan’s own pocket in his speeches before Sargsyan speculated over the pockets of others.

The opposition leader claimed that, while CBA chairman, Tigran Sargsyan sold $35 million worth of gold for $17 million, implying that Sargsyan may have profited himself from the discrepancy in sums.

Prime Minister Sargsyan responded to the accusations by saying that the sale of gold reserves has become a subject of political speculation and gambling.

According to the premier, “the political decision that there should not be gold in the Armenian Central Bank’s depots was made in 1994 and all physical reserves of gold kept in the Republic of Armenia were taken out of the country to Switzerland in 1994, 1995, 1996 and subsequent years, instead metal deposit currency accounts in dollars were opened. In 2003, the Central Bank decided to convert the metal accounts in dollars into [British] pound deposit accounts. As a result of that deal we got a net profit of 2.3 billion and that was totally transferred to the state budget.”

According to Sargsyan, physical gold deposited in Armenia could not have contributed to solutions to economic and social problems in our country.

Artyom Khachatryan, director of the center for political studies tries to shed light on the dark spots in a paradoxical situation like this, when the sides have actually launched a cold war.

“It’s a fact the gold was sold. A fact is also the state lost because of the appreciation of gold that followed. But Ter-Petrosyan’s arguments can be convincing for only a dilettante,” explains Khachatryan. “The Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia did what all the central banks of the world regularly do. One can blame the bank analysts for making wrong forecasts, but not its chairman for pocketing the money.”

Sargsyan continues his work regardless of the speculations brewing around him, and trying to regulate the ‘inputs’ and the ‘outputs’ of the officials’ pockets.

According to the government a high council of creating a new culture of income governance holding 3 sessions a week has been created in which any mediation of officials to the tax and customs reforms will become a subject of discussions. A legislative package is prepared to publicize any information on violations including both the name of the violator and the punishment he or she will serve.

“You are all aware who is engaged in business in your sphere. Bring it to those people’s attention that they have no right to personally interfere in the work of the tax and the customs services,” Sargsyan added.

The next most corrupt agency after the tax service, the government mentions, is the police.

“Obviously we have a serious problem in this sphere also – that of corruption, when the service is provided in the name of the state, but certain prices are set and sums are extracted from people. I ask the police head to submit suggestions on the measures to be taken to qualitatively improve the services provided to our citizens in short terms,” Sargsyan concluded promising to regularly reflect on the problem.