Tuesday,
Government Details First Results Of Crackdown On Tax Fraud
• Emil Danielyan
Armenia - Tax inspectors raid the offices of the GLG Project company linked to
a brother of former President Serzh Sarkisian, 23 June 2018.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Tuesday that his government has
recovered more than 20 billion drams ($42 million) of unpaid taxes in less than
two months.
Pashinian attributed that to an ongoing “fight against corruption, abuses and
the shadow economy.” “This is a very important indicator, and I think that we
must keep up our efforts in this direction,” he said at a weekly cabinet
meeting in Yerevan.
Davit Ananian, the head of the State Revenue Committee (SRC), specified that
the sum equivalent to almost 1.8 percent of Armenia’s 2017 tax revenue was
collected from 73 companies accused of tax evasion. They have been investigated
by not only the SRC but also the National Security Service (NSS) and the
police, he told cabinet members.
Ananian singled out a tax fraud case brought against a customs brokerage
company reportedly linked to his predecessor, Vartan Harutiunian.
The NSS claimed in late May that the company, Norfolk Consulting, has evaded $7
million in taxes since being set up last summer and obtaining exclusive rights
to process imports from China, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. Norfolk’s
executive director, Armen Unanian, and two chief accountants were arrested at
the time. They all were freed a week later after Unanian agreed to transfer the
allegedly unpaid taxes to the state.
In mid-June, the SRC accused two other customs brokerage firms of failing to
pay more than 2 billion drams in taxes.
Armenia’s leading food supermarkets have been the other major targets of the
new government’s stated crackdown on tax evasion. They have agreed to pay hefty
fines despite insisting that they stuck to taxation rules that were set by the
previous government.
Ananian promised a tougher crackdown on companies and individuals
underreporting their earnings when he was appointed as head of the SRC in late
May. He said that the government’s tax revenue will be “substantially higher
than planned” this year. It rose by more than 7 percent in 2017.
Pashinian said on Tuesday that the unpaid taxes detected by the law-enforcement
authorities will be added to Armenia’s 2018 state budget. In particular, he
said, the government will allocate 10 billion drams ($21 million) in additional
subsidies to impoverished communities outside Yerevan.
The premier also stressed: “This figure [$42 million] doesn’t include illegal
enrichment and embezzlement cases and cases involving other corrupt practices,
which are also extremely large in scale. This process will definitely continue,
and we will recover very serious sums and reverse damage inflicted on the
state.”
The most high-profile probes of “illegal enrichment” launched to date involve
former President Serzh Sarkisian’s former chief bodyguard, Vachagan Ghazarian,
and brother Levon.
Ghazarian was arrested late last month after the NSS confiscated more than $2
million worth of cash from him. According to the NSS, he claimed to have
“forgotten” to add this and other money to his official income declarations.
Around the same time, the SRC discovered documents showing that Levon Sarkisian
and his two children hold nearly $7 million in an Armenian bank. Sarkisian and
his daughter are now facing prosecution for their failure to disclose these
sums to a state anti-corruption body.
An Armenian court issued an arrest warrant for Levon Sarkisian on Saturday. He
has still not been arrested, however, suggesting that he may have fled the
country.
Investigators To Question Another General Over 2008 Violence
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian (R) and chief of the Armenian army
staff, General Yuri Khachaturov, at a meeting in Yerevan, 28May2015.
Armenia’s former top army general currently heading the Russian-led Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has been summoned to Yerevan for
interrogation in connection with the 2008 post-election violence in the country.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) said on Tuesday that Yuri Khachaturov
will be questioned as a “witness” in its long-running inquiry into the deadly
unrest. A spokeswoman for the SIS told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am)
that he has pledged to arrive in Yerevan and answer investigators’ questions at
the end of this month.
The questions will likely revolve around the Armenian army’s alleged
involvement in the March 2008 crackdown on opposition supporters who
demonstrated in Yerevan in the wake of a disputed presidential election. Then
President Robert Kocharian declared a state of emergency and ordered army units
into the capital amid vicious clashes between security forces and protesters.
Eight protesters and two police servicemen died as a result.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who was a key speaker at the 2008 protests,
told the SIS to finally solve the killings shortly after he swept to power in a
popular uprising in May.
The law-enforcement body last week issued an arrest warrant for retired General
Mikael Harutiunian, who was Armenia’s defense minister during the 2008 unrest.
It charged Harutiunian with illegally using the armed forces against the
protesters, saying that amounted to an “overthrow of constitutional order.”
Khachaturov was a deputy defense minister in March 2008. The newly elected
President Serzh Sarkisian appointed him as chief of the army’s General Staff in
April 2008. Khachaturov’s predecessor in that post, Seyran Ohanian, was named
defense minister at the time.
Ohanian was personally involved in the enforcement of three-week emergency rule
introduced by Kocharian. SIS investigators reportedly questioned him as a
witness last week. They also sent a summons to Kocharian.
Khachaturov, 65, served as the army’s chief of staff from 2008-2016. Russia,
Armenia and four other ex-Soviet states making up the CSTO appointed him as
secretary general of the Russian-led defense pact in April 2017.
Pashinian Allies Want Fresh Elections In Yerevan
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia - Nikol Pashinian (C) and other leaders of the Yelk alliance lead a
pre-election demonstration in Yerevan, 21Apr2017.
A senior representative of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Yelk alliance on
Tuesday called for the conduct of fresh municipal elections in Yerevan
following the resignation of Mayor Taron Markarian.
Markarian, who is a senior member of former President Serzh Sarkisian’s
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), stepped down on Monday after weeks of
pressure from Pashinian and his allies.
Under Armenian law, Yerevan’s municipal council has to elect a new mayor within
a month. Failure to do so would give the central government the right to
disband the legislature and hold snap elections in the capital.
Representatives of the HHK, which holds 46 seats in the 63-member council,
declined to say on Tuesday whether it will nominate a mayoral candidate. A
senior Yelk councilor, Davit Khazhakian, was confident that the former ruling
party will not do that.
“It is evident that there must be pre-term elections of the city council,”
Khazhakian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). The vote should be
held in September, he said.
Yelk, which controls 14 council seats, consists of three political parties that
were in opposition to Armenia’s former government. One of them, Civil Contract,
is headed by Pashinian.
In Khazhakian’s words, it is not yet known whether the three Yelk parties would
participate in the snap polls jointly or on their own. Nor have they discussed
any candidacies for the vacant post of mayor so far, he said.
“I think such discussions will be held very soon,” added Khazhakian.
Yelk finished second in the last Yerevan elections held in May 2017. It claimed
that the HHK won them through vote buying and abuse of administrative
resources. Sarkisian’s party denied that.
Press Review
“Zhoghovurd” finds “interesting” the fact that Yerevan’s Mayor Taron Markarian
gave no reason for his resignation which he announced on Monday. “It is not
clear whether or not the resignation was agreed with Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian,” writes the paper. It notes that Pashinian effectively called for
Markarian’s resignation shortly after he came to power. It describes Markarian
as “one of the key figures of the former government who was not acceptable to
the new authorities.”
“After the street-based regime change it was not hard to guess that joint work
between the former regime’s representative Taron Markarian and the
velvet-revolutionary government is impossible,” writes “Hayots Ashkhar.” This
is why the mayor had no choice but to step down, says the paper.
“Zhamanak” reacts to former President Robert Kocharian’s latest comments on the
2008 crackdown on opposition protesters which was ordered by him. The paper
says that while defending his actions in February-March 2008 Kocharian is now
trying to dodge responsibility for a secret order to the armed forces which was
signed by then Defense Minister Mikael Harutiunian. Kocharian said that he did
not have to agree to Harutiunian’s decision to deploy troops in and around
Yerevan. Kocharian is thus “washing his hands on the issue of Mikael
Harutiunian,” comments the paper. “What is more, he is indirectly holding Serzh
Sarkisian responsible for that,” it claims.
“168 Zham” quotes a U.S. political analyst, Paul Stronski, as saying that U.S.
President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are unlikely
to discuss the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when they meet in Helsinki
this month. He notes that there Russia and the United States have had few
differences on Karabakh.
(Tigran Avetisian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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