Insurance companies and specialists in insurance policy are claiming that police are hiding the real number of road accidents having occurred since mandatory insurance went into effect January 1. They charge that road police are taking bribes from motorists in order to avoid paying fines or insurance claims.

Last May the National Assembly of Armenia passed a law obliging all of about 450,000 vehicle owners in Armenia to buy a ‘third-party’ damage insurance policy priced between 16,000 and 109,000 AMD (about $45-300).

Compensation on insurance policies would be up to 3 million drams (about $8,300) if a person’s health or life are concerned, a compensation of property damage will be within a range of up to 1.5 million drams (about $4,160). But even if several people are victims in a road accident, payment on the insurance policy cannot be more than 9 million drams (about $25,000), and in the case of property damage it cannot be more than 10.5 million drams (about $29,000).

“According to ‘Reso’ and ‘Nairi Insurance’ insurance companies’ data, only on January 1-17, 270 road accidents occured, whereas the numbers reported by the RA Police are quite fewer,” says Edward Hovhannisyan, Director of Achilles Center for the Defense of Drivers' Rights.

RA Police, in fact, reported 72 accidents during the period.

“The Police reports only those accident cases which were accompanied with body injures. That is the reason why there is such a discrepancy between the figures,” says Norik Sargsyan, Head of Road Patrol Service Department at Armenia's Road Police.

He also disavows as baseless the claims that police levy money from citizens who suffer a road accident.
Hovhannisyan states that according to the citizens who turn to his NGO, RA Police representatives take money from motorists in cases where the parties of an accident settle the claim among themselves.

“No law says that they [law enforcers] have the right to levy 20,000 drams ($55) from citizens,” Hovhannisyan says.

According to data since the law went into effect, not a single driver who suffered a damage of more than 200,000 drams ($555) has been insured. Representatives of ‘Reso’ and ‘Nairi Insurance companies state that they have generally insured 60 citizens out of the 270, and the sum totaled eight million drams ($22,200).