The Oversight and Audit Service was,
until 2011, a temporary body within the Central Electoral Commission, tasked
with monitoring the contributions to, the accounting and use of pre-election
funds of candidates, parties and party alliances participating in national
elections.
In
its 2010 evaluation report on Armenia in Transparency of Party Funding,[1] the Group of States of
Corruption (GRECO) stressed that “the independence of the monitoring
institutions is insufficient. […] while the CEC is an independent body, it is
composed of a majority of representatives of political parties, which may
result in a lack of a determined and proactive approach towards supervision.
The first stage of the supervision is carried out by the CEC’s Oversight and
Audit Service, which is composed of four seconded public officials. There are
no measures in place, such as rules on incompatibilities or limitations of the
number of mandates, to prevent conflicts of interest and undue interference in
the work of the Oversight and Audit Service, nor of the CEC itself. The
Oversight and Audit Service, which is only a temporary body established in
election periods, clearly lacks sufficient professional staff and financial
resources to go beyond a mere formal check of the documents submitted by the
parties and candidates, all the more as it has to verify the declarations on
pre-election funds within 20 days of their submission. While both the Service
and the CEC may request additional information from the parties and candidates
and are vested with investigative powers, including access to information from
other institutions (e.g. banks), the evidence collected by the [GRECO team]
clearly indicates that these powers are hardly used in practice and that no
cross-checks are performed to verify the accuracy of the data contained in the
declarations. […] The CEC and the Ministry of Justice have no competence to
impose administrative sanctions.” The GRECO thus recommended “to ensure that an
independent and integrated mechanism is in place for the monitoring of the
funding of political parties and electoral campaigns, and that it is given the
mandate, the authority and the financial and staff resources to effectively and
pro-actively supervise such funding, to investigate alleged infringements of political
financing regulations and, as appropriate, to impose sanctions.”
The Armenian Government decided to address the
lack of enforcement of campaign finance regulations and amended in 2011 the
Electoral Code and the law on political parties. As a result, the Oversight and
Audit Service is now a permanent body with a mandate to review both the funding
of political parties and election campaigns and has to draw up statements on
candidates’ declarations that are then submitted to the CEC for discussion and review.
The GRECO, in its 2012 compliance report,[2]
underlined that “Positive measures include the new non-partisan composition of
the Central Electoral Commission, a reinforcement of the independence of the
members of the Oversight and Audit Service from political parties,[3]
as well as the fact that the staff resources of the service have visibly been
increased and that administrative sanctions may now be imposed by the Central
Electoral Commission.”
[3] The members of the Central Electoral Commission, as
well as the Head of the Oversight and Audit Service, cannot be members of a
political party. The other civil servants employed by the Service are submitted
to the principle of political restraint, which means that they cannot use their
position in the interest of political parties.
