The Corruption Prevention Commission of Armenia has rejected the application lodged by the Human Rights Defender to institute proceedings against Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan.
Grigoryan gave an interview to RusArmInfo news website, and the video recording of the interview was posted on the official website of the Security Council on October 21, 2021.
In the interview, Grigoryan said the following when he touched upon Arman Tatoyan [Human Rights Defender of Armenia].
“After the revolution, several circles presented themselves as members of the opposition, even though they need to be impartial, starting from the Constitutional Court and ending with several structures. If not structures, then certain people holding positions within those structures have tried to be counterrevolutionary, and this process is mainly over, even though not completely. Certain political circles have made statements, the person you mentioned made a political statement that the Ministry of Defense refuted; the Human Rights Defender, who has a bid to be a part of the opposition, tried to gain dividends by making political statements. He also has a few more months left before he gets involved in more overt political activities. His time is almost up, and I am certain that the “Civil Contract” faction will nominate its candidate. Have you heard any impartial statement from him? Those statements have been mostly political, at least in the post-revolution period.”
Before this, Tatoyan had issued a statement claiming that the Azerbaijani troops which had invaded the territory of Armenia months ago, are carrying out fortification and engineering works, but the Ministry of Defense refuted this. The Human Rights Defender opposed the refutation by claiming that this statement and other statements of the Human Rights Defender are based on reliable data obtained through fact-finding activities, and that the mentioned statement is based on facts that the Office of the Human Rights Defender has consistently gathered after daily monitoring and studies of alarming reports. Tatoyan stressed that “a campaign to discredit the activities of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia has been launched, and the Secretary of the Security Council has joined the campaign”.
On November 1, Tatoyan applied to the Corruption Prevention Commission, stating that Armen Grigoryan has violated the requirement of the Law on Public Service according to which public servants shall be obliged to observe the principles of conduct prescribed by law and the rules of conduct arising from those principles.
To reject the application, the Commission has presented the rationale according to which the Corruption Prevention Commission had not adopted a code of conduct for persons holding state positions when the video showing the interview of Armen Grigoryan including his statements on the Human Rights Defender was posted on the YouTube channel of the Security Council, and consequently, according to the decision, it is impossible to clarify whether there is a violation or not.