President's Office Issues Statement

The President of the Republic has signed the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia and related laws, namely, the law on amendments and supplements to the Criminal Procedure Code and the law on amendments to the Law on Banking Secrecy, as a package of laws, while also considering future amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and the Law on Banking Secrecy, as well as the possibility of contesting certain provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code in the Constitutional Court.

This was stated in the announcement from the President's Office.

“The Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia (CPC) and the related laws, namely, the law on amendments and supplements to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC amendments) and the law on amendments to the Law on Banking Secrecy (Law on Banking Secrecy), have been presented to the President of the Republic for signing by the National Assembly on July 7, 2021. A diligent legal culture implies that the laws presented as a package should at least be logically and regulatively interconnected, and the adoption of related laws should be conditioned by the adoption of the primary law. Thus, it is unclear why or on what grounds the legislator has deemed the CPC to be interconnected with the other two laws included in the Package when presenting the aforementioned laws together.

It should be noted that laws regarding the review of the procedures for disclosing banking and insurance secrets and information related to transactions with securities, which were adopted by the National Assembly on January 22, 2020, were contested for their constitutionality by the President of the Republic on February 6, 2020. The Supreme Court made a ruling on this matter on June 18, 2020, recognizing the contested provisions as contrary to several articles of the Constitution.

The CPC amendments and the Law on Banking Secrecy submitted for the President's signature as part of the Package have been significantly modified in comparison to the text adopted on January 22, 2020, aligning more closely with the Constitution. However, certain provisions remain prima facie problematic from the perspective of the principle of proportionality.

Regarding the CPC, the preliminary study of this extensive document proposed by the President's Office, which includes numerous conceptual changes, allows for the conclusion that it generally complies with the Constitution. Nevertheless, some of its separate provisions appear to be problematic, and certain amendments are deemed controversial conceptually, posing practical risks concerning the protection of human rights in the context of legal practice.

The President has signed the laws presented in the package while considering future amendments to the CPC and the Law on Banking Secrecy, as well as the potential to address the contestation of specific provisions of the CPC in the Constitutional Court. For this purpose, the President's Office is currently conducting additional in-depth and multifaceted studies of the laws included in the Package,” the statement reads.