Corruption in Public Procurement Sector and Potential Sectoral Corruption Risks; Presentation of the Institute of Beneficial Ownership: The Distance Learning Course of the ACSYL was held

On 5 May, 2020, the regular distance learning course of the 5th stream of the Anti-Corruption School for Young Leaders took place. The topic of the training was “Corruption in Public Procurement Sector and Potential Sectoral Corruption Risks; Presentation of the Institute of Beneficial Ownership”. Ms Mariam Zadoyan, Lawyer/Expert, Advocate at the Armenian Lawyers’ Association delivered the lecture.

The training started with the completion of the pretest by the audience, which was aimed to check their initial knowledge on the above-mentioned topic, after which the lecturer presented the public procurement system in general, and spoke about the possible corruption risks in public procurement.

The lecturer presented to the audience a number of anti-corruption mechanisms, such as awareness videos, websites and regulations, including the introduction of the institute of beneficial ownership. She also defined the following corruption risks in the public procurement system:

• Defining standards for specific businesses in technical specifications
• Shortcomings of Unified Purchase List Codes, when the procurement is artificially divided into several parts and formulation of purchase from one person.
• Merely a formal existence of the responsible department and the evaluation committee,
• Low level of awareness of economic entities.

The lecturer introduced the listeners to the examples of alerts received and solved through BizProtect whistleblowing platform, and also presented the reforms implemented in the sphere by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association of and the CSOs Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia. The lecture was summed up with a posttest, which further strengthened the listeners’ knowledge in this field.