Within the framework of the legislative reforms taking place in the Republic of Armenia a number of amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code have recently been adopted and since June 18, 2022 have entered into force through which it is envisaged from now on to reserve the preliminary investigation of criminal cases on some corruption-related crimes and torture for the RA Investigative Committee.

Pursuant to the above-mentioned legislation reforms preliminary investigation of some crimes envisaged by the relevant articles of the RA Criminal Code will from now on be conducted by the RA Investigative Committee.

Thus,

Preliminary investigation of criminal cases on commercial bribe (Article 200 of RA Criminal Code), bribing the participants and organizers of professional and commercial sports competitions or shows (Article 201 of RA Criminal Code), abuse of authority by the employees of commercial or other organizations (Article 214 of RA Criminal Code) will be conducted by the investigators of the RA Investigative Committee.

Moreover, a number of corruption-related other crimes will be investigated in the RA Investigative Committee, as well which have not been committed by the officials or persons holding public office envisaged by the Parts 3 and 4 of the Article 308 of RA Criminal Code.

Investigation of criminal cases on abuse of official authority (Article 308 of RA Criminal Code), exceeding official authorities (Article 309 of RA Criminal Code) and abuse of power, transgression of authority or administrative dereliction (Article 375 of RA Criminal Code) have also been passed to the Investigative Committee when these committals have been committed out of non-profit interest and were combined with using violence, threatening to use violence or using weapon or special means.

It should be added that preliminary investigation of criminal cases on torture (Article 309.1 of RA Criminal Code), forcing testimony by the judge, by the prosecutor, by the investigator or by the person in charge of inquiry or making a wrong translation using torture (Part 2 of the Article 341 of RA Criminal Code) as well as in case of being combined with torture envisaged by the Part 3 of the Article 341 of RA Criminal Code will also be conducted in the Investigative Committee.

With all this, the RA Investigative Committee informs that within the criminal cases initiated on the above-mentioned publicly dangerous crimes proper and comprehensive investigation will be conducted based on all the priorities of institutional and functional independence of the investigative body.