On the occasion of 107^th anniversary of the establishment of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Armenia and on the day of employee of the Prosecutor’s Office, an international high-level conference “Independence and impartiality of prosecutors in the context of prosecution of crimes committed by public officials: corruption and money laundering” was launched in Dilijan on July 1, 2025.

This was the third international conference organized jointly by the Prosecutor General’s Office, European Union and Council of Europe. This event aimed to emphasize the importance of prosecutorial independence and impartiality in crime cases involving public officials, including corruption and money laundering cases, to discuss European standards and best practice of prosecution of similar cases, to improve the cooperation and exchange of experience with member states and international partners as well as to face the current challenges with regard to the prosecutorial independence.

          During the 4 plenary sessions of two days’ conference a reference was made to the following:

• Ensuring the prosecutorial independence and impartiality;
• Necessity of specialization of prosecutors in cases involving specific crimes;
• Peculiarities of the criminal prosecution of corruption and money laundering cases.  

Alexandra Ramusch, Deputy Prosecutor General of the Republic of Austria, Pasquale Fimiani, Advocate General of the Republic of Italy, Theologos Delliveis Dominikos, Prosecutor of First Instance Court, Economic Crime Prosecutor Office, Hellenic Republic, Jacek Lazarowicz, Prosecutor at the Department for Organized Crime and Corruption of the National Prosecutor’s Office of Poland and Despina Kyprianou, Council of Europe expert delivered their reports during the first plenary session.

Yeghiazar Avagyan, Deputy Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia, Eric Fågelsbo, Member of the Board on Relations with partners of the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust), national Member for Sweden at Eurojust, Giorgi Gogadze, Vice-President of the International Association of Prosecutors and Ian Richardson, Council of Europe expert delivered their reports during the second plenary session.

Gintas Ivanauskas, Deputy Prosecutor General of the Republic of Lithuania, Tsovak Mnatsakanyan, Senior Prosecutor of the Department of Supervision over Legality of Pre-Trial Proceedings in the RA Anti-Corruption Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office and Ian Richardson, Council of Europe expert delivered their reports during the third plenary session.

Victoria Buttigieg, Prosecutor General of Malta, Vahe Avetisyan, Deputy Head of the Financial Monitoring Center of the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia, Fulvio Baldi, Deputy Prosecutor General of the Republic of Italy and Michael Halepas, Council of Europe expert delivered their reports during the fourth plenary session.

The plenary sessions were moderated by Lilit Daneghyan, Deputy head of Cooperation programs Division, Department for Implementation of Human Rights, Justice and Legal Cooperation Standards, DGI, Council of Europe, Anna Vardapetyan, Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia and Tomislav Sertic, Head of Unit with the Economic Crime and Cooperation Division, Economic Crime and Corruption Department, Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law, DGI, Council of Europe.

Anna Vardapetyan, Prosecutor General, summarizing the results of two day’s conference, thanked the participants, who demonstrated great patience, “In my opening speech I mentioned that from “We don’t have any precedence” we reached to the phrase “It has already become a tradition”. They say the first time is an incident, the second time is coincidence and the third time is regularity. This conference was the third one. I suggest to make this regularity autonomous. I want our professional discussions be regular in Armenia”, mentioned the Prosecutor General of the Republic and thanked everyone for making the conference a reality”.