YEREVAN, June 4. /ARKA/. By a vote of 111 to no against and abstentions, Armenia’s National Assembly has passed today in the second and final reading a bill on making a set of amendments to the Law on Administrative Offenses, which provide for introduction of fines for advertising of organizations which provide financial services without Central Bank’s licenses.

"A license is required for offering intermediary services, but it does not solve the problem, since such activity is often concealed under the guise of consulting services, and often it is provided by unregistered individuals ," Maneh Tandilyan, a lawmaker from the Bright Armenia faction, who authored the bill, said.

The bill calls for imposing a fine in the amount of 2,000 minimum wages (a minimum wage is 1000 drams, a little more than $2). If the violation is repeated within next four years, the second fine will increase to the amount of 4,000 minimum wages.

Tandilyan noted that the proposed bill does not completely solve the problem, since for the most part advertising of unlicensed services is carried out in social networks, but it will help significantly reduce its volume.

"For example, Facebook has the ability to limit advertising if there is appropriate legislative regulation in the country," she said. She said in many countries, the authorities ask social networking services to block this kind of illegal advertising. According to her, to solve the problem, financial organizations and society need to be involved in this matter too. -0-