Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

Because of concealing information, the “Yerevan Urban Development and Investment Programs Department” State Non-Commercial Organization (SNCO) had a three years’ persistent legal fight, wasting state resources on court appeals. On 18 January 2012 Armenia’s Court of Cassation ended Freedom of Information Centre’s three year struggle for receiving information, by finally denying acceptance of the cassation appeal by “Yerevan Urban Development and Investment Programs Department” SNCO.

On the one hand, after passing the all 3 court instances two times, FOICA managed to win the case by this creating another part of absolutely positive court practice on FOI right. On the other hand, by this case FOICA managed to improve the proactive publication of the information about state non-commercial organizations.

To remind, In 2009 FOI Annual Award ceremony “Yerevan Urban Development and Investment Programs Department” SNCO had received the negative “Close Lock” nomination, for not providing information about the contracts signed by the SNCO and its budget expenses. Afterwards, the RA Government published all contracts signed with SNCOs and their budget expenses www.gov.am official website of the RA Government: the “Transparent Governance” section was created in the website, where the abovementioned information is now being published on permanent bases.

The background of the court case is fallowing: on 27 February 2009, the FOIC had sent an information request to the SNCO, requesting to provide information about the SNCO activities, including the list of organizations having concluded Assignment and Description Contracts with the SNCO in 2006, 2007, 2008 and the amount of income received by the SNCO from these Contracts. In response to this, Yerevan Urban Development and Investment Programs Department responded that the information requested by the FOIC is a commercial secret. This was a preposterous response since the SNCO is a non-commercial organization, does not pursue a commercial interest and thus can not have a commercial secret. It’s worth mentioning that the requested information can not be deemed as a commercial secret of the organizations which concluded a Contract with the SNCO either, since the FOIC had requested information about the general income and not the amount of income received from each organization. The Freedom of Information Centre went to the court to appeal this illegal denial of information.

On December 7, 2009, the RA Administrative Court dismissed the FOICA’s claim, founding that the SNCO had actually answered the FOICA’s request for information. The FOICA appealed the RA Administrative Court’s decision to the RA Court of Cassation, and on June 3, 2010, the higher court fully satisfied FOICA’s claim and sent the case to a new exam. This time the RA Administrative Court fully satisfied FOICA’s claim against the “Yerevan Urban Development and Investment Programs Department” SNCO. The SNCO appealed the RA Administrative Court’s decision first to the RA Administrative Court of Appeal, than, after getting denial, to the RA Court of Cassation. In its decision of 18 January 2012, Armenia’s Cassation Court upheld the decision of the Administrative Court, according to which the activities of the “Yerevan Urban Development and Investment Programs Department” SNCO were recognized as illegal, obliging the SNCO to provide the information requested by FOIC within a 5 days time.