CENTRAL BANK EMBARKING ON STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISM
Support A1+!Armenian Central Bank governor Tigran Sargssyan presented a bill on prevention of financing terrorism and profits received from illegal deals.
In 2004, Armenia joined the UN resolution against financing terrorism as well as Strasbourg and Vienna resolutions against money laundering and profits received from illegal deals.
Tigran Sargssyan said Armenian law doesn’t correspond to international standards. Armenia has to bring it to conformity with international criteria before Jan 1.
Under the bill proposed by the bank governor, the Central Bank gets control over money flows. Shady transactions can be foiled by the bank and money frozen.
The bill was objected by the parliament vice-speaker Tigran Torossyan, who was unhappy about sweeping powers to given to the bank by the bill. He wonders why should bank, not National Assembly determine which deal is suspicious and which is not.
The head of the bank angrily objected saying the National Assembly has to accept all these criteria as the law. It is impossible, he said, to make amendments to the law every time when a new criterion needs to be set.
MP Gagik Avetissyan said he feared the bank was given room to abuse its authority especially in freezing money.
Tigran Sargssyan answered that authority abuse is absolutely impossible, as the commission set for making decisions will consist of seven members.
