YEREVAN — The Armenian government on Thursday appointed Sasun Khachatryan, a long-serving senior law-enforcement official, as head of a newly established agency tasked with investigating corruption cases.
The Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) will inherit most of its powers from divisions of four Armenian law-enforcement bodies that have long prosecuted corruption-related crimes. One of them, the Special Investigative Service (SIS), will be dissolved after the ACC starts operating in full next year.
Speaking during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan immediately after his appointment, Khachatryan expressed confidence that the new agency will increase the efficiency of the government’s fight against corruption. He said the ACC will start operating by the end of October and will finally take shape “in the course of next year.”
Khachatryan, 44, worked as a senior prosecutor under Armenia’s former governments and was appointed as SIS chief shortly after Nikol Pashinyan came to power in 2018. Pashinyan has succeeded in eliminating systemic corruption in Armenia since then.
The SIS and other law-enforcement agencies have launched dozens of high-profile corruption investigations mainly targeting former senior state officials, including ex-Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian.
