When invited to a wedding, few would consider a bribe for the notary as a gift for the happy couple. In Armenia, though, many such couples are paying notaries two or even three times more than they should for tying the knot, Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian claims.
To check what's amiss over at the civil registry, the government sent a task force, made up of young people, who reported back about rampant overcharging by many officials and notaries, Regnum news agency reported.
The prime minister said that legislation proposed by the government will help eradicate such pockets of corruption; meanwhile, the secret registry monitoring will continue, he pledged.
News of Sarkisian's covert operation comes on the heels of Washington's decision to pull the plug on a major development aid program for Armenia. Low scores on good governance were among the reasons cited for the decision by US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
Stepping up the fight on corruption might be one way of improving those scores.
Sarkisian did not say if people are similarly overcharged for divorces, but, conceivably, with millions of dollars in aid funds hanging in the balance, that question might be the next mission for Armenia's civil-registry-corruption task force.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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