YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian parliament has adopted at first hearing the bill on amending the Criminal Code which envisages making pick-pocketing a public offense instead of the current civil (private) offense.

The bill was introduced to parliament by Deputy Minister of Justice Anna Vardapetyan.

“We are also solving another important issue with this bill – we are formalizing the term “robbery” in a way that “significant amounts” won’t any longer be a mandatory feature for the act to constitute robbery,” she said.

Under these amendments robbery will constitute the “Secret stealing of another’s property”.  The law will also cover pick-pocketing by defining the robbery of personal items from the possession of a person.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan