Armenian diaspora’s criminal activity revealed at UN session

  06 June 2021    Read: 271
Armenian diaspora’s criminal activity revealed at UN session

The UN General Assembly held a special session on challenges and measures to prevent and combat corruption and strengthen international cooperation on June 2-4 and a political declaration was adopted following the session, said the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, AzVision.az reports.

A side event entitled "Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism – Challenges faced by Non-Profit Organizations" was held at the initiative of the Republic of Azerbaijan within the session.

While speaking at the opening ceremony of the event, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the UN Yashar Aliyev stressed that non-profit organizations and charitable foundations play an important role in ensuring sustainable development, but limited control over the activity of such organizations ultimately leads to the involvement of some of them in criminal activity, such as corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing.

The event included presentations made by experts from the International Monetary Fund, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the University of Liverpool, the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law and the Financial Monitoring Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as interactive discussions were held.

The participants highlighted the need to develop specific rules to prevent the abuse by charitable foundations, the use of virtual currencies and the uncontrolled segment of the internet by some charitable organizations to finance criminal activity and the use of certain banks and other financial institutions as instruments in such activity.

While speaking at the event, a representative of the Financial Monitoring Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan stressed that during the 44-day Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh war, the organizations of the Armenian diaspora operating abroad collected $170 million, of which $110 million was illegally transferred to the budget of Armenia.

The representative stressed that this fact was recognized by high-ranking officials of Armenia, including the prime minister, and that the money, which was fraudulently collected from citizens of different countries under the guise of humanitarian aid, was eventually transferred to the state budget of Armenia and was used to provide illegal armed formations previously located in the liberated territories of Azerbaijan with weapons.

The representatives of the foreign ministries and permanent missions of the UN member-states, representatives of international organizations and NGOs attended the event.


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