YEREVAN, JANUARY 30, ARMENPRESS. Crime rate in Armenia grew 11,2% during 2018, Chief of Staff of the National Police Force of Armenia Colonel Armen Ghukasyan said at a news conference. He said the number grew by 2267 more incidents.

“The overall number of crimes in 2017 was 20,284; in 2018 it was 22,551. The growth is mostly associated with two types of crime. First is corruption-related crimes. If in 2017 there were 634 corruption crimes, in 2018 the number grew 2,5 times, totaling 1353. These crimes with their nature are ranked among the latent crime types and the growth in numbers is a positive result itself because uncovering them is rather difficult for law enforcement agencies and requires duly implementation of massive tactical investigative operations. I find it noteworthy that 56,2% of the discovered cases have been exposed by police bodies”, the colonel said. In 2018, police revealed nearly 5,7 billion drams in damages of corruption related crimes. In 2017, the number was below 1 billion.

“Proceeding from the abovementioned I believe the growth if this kind of crimes shouldn’t alarm the public, on the contrary, it should please them,” he said.

The second type of crime in is property crime. In 2017, the number of revealed cases was 8102, while in 2018 – 10112.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan