Today, Lusine Nalbandyan, lawyer expert at the Armenian Lawyers’ Association, participated in a meeting on the introduction of the Beneficial Owners Register, which was organize at the RA Ministry of Justice. Deputy Justice Minister Suren Krmoyan, Deputy Head of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Eddie Rich, Country Manager for Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia Oliana Valigura, as well as representatives from the NGO sector participated in the meeting.
The meeting participants were familiarized with the schedule of the introduction of the Beneficial Owners Register according to the 4th OGP-Armenia Draft Action Plan, acquisition of financial sources, priority of steps to undertake, implementation mechanisms other related issues.
Deputy Minister of Justice Mr. Krmoyan said that initially, the pilot version of the Beneficial Owners Register will be applied for the companies of the mining sector. He also added that all information submitted by legal entities engaged in this field and their affiliated persons should be checked at several levels, which would reduce the risks of information inaccuracies they provided. In particular, he noted that the investigative journalists, the public representatives and the state bodies should ensure consistent verification processes, guaranteeing the accountability of the process and transparency. The participants of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative welcomed the direction undertaken by Armenia and shared their international experience. During the meeting, the sides also touched upon the effectiveness of tools and mechanisms for launching the entire system. Ms Oliana Valigura noted that the experience where a tool that provides opportunity to ask questions on the online was operated in the Beneficial Owners Register. This is a tool that supports the inspection bodies to make the process more public.
Ms Lusine Nalbandyan, legal expert of the Armenian Lawyers’ Association, noted that the “Draft RA Anti-Corruption Strategy and its Implementation Action Plan 2019-2022”, provides for the introduction of the Beneficial Owners Registry Institute, according to which legal persons acquire the right to disclose the actual Beneficial Owners of their organizations. Meanwhile, legal entities should bear responsibility for disclosing information about Beneficial Owners rather than having the right of a discretionary choice of disclosure of Beneficial Owners. It was also clarified for the participants that that at this stage there is no objective to involving all legal entities, whereas the requirement for disclosure the information on Beneficial Owners shall be imperative for legal entities in the mining sector.
It should be also mentioned that the Draft Anti-Corruption Strategy of the RA envisaged involving all legal persons in the Beneficial Owners Register in the period of 2019-2022, and only for the mining companies 2 years has been allocated. We believe that this term is too long to co-ordinate and implement the identification process of Beneficial Owners in a single sector, as according to the anti-corruption strategy of the RA the fight against corruption should be coordinated, and at the same time the ways complement each other, otherwise we may encounter the problem of tardiness for the investment of any institute.