One of the main priority of the RA General Prosecutor’s Office is the legal struggle against illegal logging. During 2018-2019 the Department for Crimes against Public Security of the RA General Prosecutor’s Office studied the state of prosecutorial supervision and charge defense aiming at further increase of effectiveness of illegal logging cases investigation under Article 296 of the RA Criminal Code.   

 

As a result many issues related to the application and evidence of the mentioned crime were found out, requiring changes in relevant legal acts with the involvement of competent state bodies, reviewing certain components of the forest protection process.

 
In particular, in fact of logging, responsible ones for the given part of the forest, as a rule, present arguments that the forest plots entrusted to them are too large and it is not possible to carry out full control. In some cases taking into account the objectivity of these circumstances the responsible ones sometimes use this argument to justify their criminal negligence or possible abuse. The mentioned problem can be regulated by means of increasing the staff of foresters, equipping the forest section with appropriate technical devices.

 

Besides, in many cases those foresters who are responsible for guarding are changed too often that sometimes when it is necessary to identify the official they even change their place in order to avoid from prosecution. But the number of such cases will be decreased if the supervision over the appointments, transfers is intensified. The limitation of the working hours of the persons responsible for the protection of the forest is 40 hours per a week, i. e. 8 hours, from 09:00 to 18:00 every day, for a five-day working week.

 

In many cases, foresters report that they have done their job properly during working hours, and it becomes almost impossible to prove otherwise.

 

The investigation of criminal cases has shown that when competent officials are employed for guarding the relevant forests and providing vocations the latter's an act of delivery and acceptance is not provided. In such conditions, even the conclusion of the forensic examination can’t allow to find out whether the illegal logging took place during the actual work of that official or not.

 

In addition, the name of the product written out are not included in the tax invoices issued by foresters, in this case the tree species are not often mentioned. Thus it make it urgent to set a mandatory procedure for mentioning the type of the tree in that tax voices. 

 

Cases have been recorded when the foresters, upon discovering the alleged illegal logging of a tree at that moment, due to lack of blanks for filling in about forest violation recorded about forest violation on a plain paper. Then, a few days later, they reproduced it and put it on proper paper, but the person who committed the forest violation refused to sign them. Such a violation may lead to the unjustified release from liability of a person who has committed a crime or administrative offense.

 

The RA Prosecutor General Artur Davtyan addressed a letter to Romanos Petrosyan, the RA Minister of Environment in order to take measures to solve the above-mentioned problems. The proposed solutions have already become subject of discussion in "Hayantar" SNCO, in which the representative of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Armenia is involved.

 

It is worth mentioning that still in 2019 amendments were made on illegal logging based on the proposals submitted by the RA Prosecutor's Office, regulating the criminal and environmental spheres.