Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

Because of concealing information, the “Yerevan Construction and Investment Projects Implementation Agency” 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 Construction and Investment Projects Implementation Agency” SNCO.

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 Construction and Investment Projects Implementation Agency” (SNCO) 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. In its decision of 18 January 2012, Armenia’s Cassation Court upheld the decision of the Administrative Court dated 20 January 2011, according to which the activities of the “Yerevan Construction and Investment Projects Implementation Agency” SNCO were recognized as illegal, obliging the SNCO to provide the information requested by FOIC within a 5 days time and to pay 24 000 as a compensation of court expenses incurred by the FOIC.