Government intends to tighten criminal liability for cybercrimes

ArmInfo. The Armenian government intends to tighten criminal liability for cybercrimes. At its meeting  on June 7, the RA National Assembly Standing Committee on Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairsissued a positive conclusion on the amendments to the Criminal Code and a package of related laws  submitted by the RA government.

Presenting the amendments, RA Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs  Arpine Sargsyan noted that recently there has been a significant  increase in cybercrime in the country, which, however, is typical for  all countries in the world. Often, such crimes are transnational in  nature, and this implies the intensification of interstate  cooperation. The Deputy Minister noted that one of the problematic  tasks is the identification of cybercrime, clarification of its  manifestations in order to avoid misunderstandings. According to  Sargsyan, not all crimes on the Internet should be considered  cybercrime. The package establishes a list of this type of crime and  measures of responsibility for committing them. This list is in line  with Armenia's international obligations, in particular, the Budapest  Convention on Cybercrime. One of the areas of the fight is to prevent  crimes using crypto assets, which are one of the means for financing  cybercrime. Currently, the Deputy Minister continued, the Central  Bank of the Republic of Armenia is working on solving this problem.  Very often, if not always, these assets are acquired through cash  transactions, and the package establishes measures to reduce them by  transferring them to non-cash payments. Sargsyan reported that work  is currently underway to develop a draft law on digital cybercrime,  which will be submitted to the National Assembly of the Republic of  Armenia during the current year.