Friday,
Pashinian Wants Further Scrutiny Of Amulsar Mining Project
• Susan Badalian
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian chairs a video conference of Armenian
officials and representatives of the Lebanese-based consulting firm ELARD,
Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian cited the need for further evaluation of
possible mining operations at Armenia’s Amulsar gold deposit on Friday after a
Lebanese-based consulting firm raised more questions about its environmental
audit of the project.
Joined by Armenian government and law-enforcements officials, lawmakers and
Armenian executives of the British-registered mining company Lydian
International, Pashinian held on Thursday a video conference with experts from
the ELARD consultancy contracted by his government in February. The experts
were asked to give additional explanations of ELARD’s report on the Amulsar
project submitted to Armenia’s Investigative Committee earlier this month.
The committee cited the report as concluding that toxic waste from the would-be
mine is extremely unlikely to contaminate mineral water sources in the nearby
spa resort of Jermuk or rivers and canals flowing into Lake Sevan.
According to the law-enforcement agency, ELARD found greater environmental
risks for other rivers in the area but said they can be minimized if Lydian
takes 16 “mitigating measures” recommended by ELARD. Lydian expressed readiness
to take virtually of all those measures.
ELARD experts offered a different interpretation of their report during the
video conference, however. They said that they cannot definitively evaluate the
Amulsar project’s potential impact on the environment because Lydian had
submitted flawed and incomplete information to the Armenian authorities.
“We could not evaluate that because of all the flaws,” one of them, Nidal
Rabah, said during the two-and-a-half hour discussion publicized by the
government on Friday. “[Lydian’s] social and environmental assessment, research
and investigation are not credible,” he added.
This left some of the Armenian lawmakers participating in the video conference
wondering why ELARD proposed the “mitigating measures” if it thought that
Lydian’s project is flawed.
For his part, Hayk Grigorian, the head of the Investigative Committee,
maintained that based on the ELARD report his investigators have no grounds to
indict anyone in their criminal inquiry into a government agency that gave the
green light for the Amulsar project in April 2016.
The inquiry was initiated by Pashinian shortly after environmental protesters
began blocking in June 2018 the roads leading to Amulsar. It was meant to
establish whether government officials dealing with Amulsar had withheld
important information from the public.
“Mr. Prime Minister, no information was concealed,” said Yura Ivanian, the
chief investigator also present at the discussion.
Pashinian seemed unconvinced by these assurances. “Why is it that ELARD experts
saw flaws in that data [provided by Lydian] while our Environment Ministry
officials did not?” he asked.
Grigorian replied that the flaws alleged by ELARD can be “neutralized” if
Lydian takes the safety measures contained in the report.
Concluding the discussion, Pashinian said that the government will now wait and
see whether the Armenian Ministry of Environment decides to order Lydian to
draw up another environmental impact assessment and submit it to a relevant
ministry division for approval. Environment Minister Erik Grigorian confirmed
that the decision will be announced by September 4.
Commenting on the video conference on his Facebook page on Friday, Pashinian
said it exposed “a number of new circumstances which require investigation and
evaluation.”
Meanwhile, Lydian’s chief executive in Armenia, Hayk Aloyan, described the
conference as “the most unprofessional discussion I have ever been to in my
life.” In a social media post, he claimed that the ELARD experts have “zero or
limited experience in the mining sector” and “couldn’t explain what standards
were breached by the company.”
Armenian PM Vows Tougher Fight Against Corruption
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian chairs a session of the
Anti-Corruption Policy Council, Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Friday again claimed to have eliminated
“systemic corruption” in Armenia while saying that Armenians expect a tougher
anti-graft fight from the authorities.
“The fight against corruption, investigations into corruption-related crimes
and especially the recoveries of damage caused by corruption are not unfolding
on a scale which we and the public have the right to expect,” he said. “There
are many objective and subjective problems here and institutional problems are
not the least important of them.”
The authorities should step up that fight by creating “new institutional
structures,” Pashinian told government officials and civil society
representatives making up an anti-corruption advisory council headed by him. In
that context, he praised an anti-graft strategy and a three-year plan of
actions stemming from it drafted by the Armenian Justice Ministry in June.
Speaking at the council meeting, Justice Minister Rustam Badasian said both
documents, which will be submitted to the government for approval, have been
amended since then. He said they continue to call for the creation of
anti-corruption courts and a special law-enforcement agency empowered to
prosecute state officials suspected of bribery, fraud and other corrupt
practices.
The proposed Anti-Corruption Committee would inherit most of its powers from
the existing Special Investigative Service (SIS), a law-enforcement body tasked
with combatting various crimes committed by state officials. A key SIS division
dealing corruption and abuse of power would be incorporated into the committee.
In Badasian’s words, these and other anti-graft measures should significantly
improve Armenia’s position in Transparency International’s global Corruption
Perceptions Index (CPI).
Armenia ranked, together with Macedonia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, 107th out of 180
countries and territories evaluated in the 2017 CPI released shortly before
last year’s “Velvet Revolution.”
The number or corruption investigations launched by Armenian law-enforcement
authorities has risen significantly since the dramatic change of government.
The most high-profile of these cases have targeted former top government
officials and individuals linked to them.
Government Plans Tax-Free Zone In Gyumri
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia -- A street in Gyumri, October 14, 2017.
The government has announced plans to set up a free economic zone in Gyumri, a
move welcomed by the mayor of Armenia’s second largest city.
Under a bill approved by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet on Thursday,
the tax-free zone would occupy more than 300 hectares of land adjacent to
Gyumri’s international airport.
“The free economic zone is expected to become an important hub for logistical
services provided in electronic commerce,” said Economy Minister Tigran
Khachatrian. It is primarily designed to accommodate warehouses used for
international e-commerce and foster “export-oriented manufacturing activities,”
he added during a cabinet meeting.
Gyumri Mayor Samvel Balasanian has for years lobbied for such a measure. He
stressed on Friday the tax haven’s economic significance for a city that has
long been suffering from high poverty and unemployment rates.
“We are going to have new jobs and there will be lots of investments,”
Balasanian said at a meeting with Armenia’s ambassadors abroad accompanied by
Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Minister for Local Government Suren
Papikian.
A government statement on the bill spoke of thousands of jobs to be created in
Gyumri in the coming years
Armenia already has two free economic zones where companies meeting certain
conditions are exempt from virtually all taxes. One of them was set up near
Meghri, a small town on the country’s border with Iran, in late 2017.
The Meghri zone has attracted few Armenian, Iranian or other firms so far. The
Armenian government blames this fact on former government officials and their
cronies who it says had privatized land plots in and around the zone at
disproportionately low prices and are now obstructing economic activity there.
In Papikian’s words, the government has asked to courts to declare those
privatization deals illegal.
Press Review
“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that representatives of the former ruling Republican
Party of Armenia (HHK) are upset with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s latest
criticism of his the former Armenian government’s handling of the
Nagorno-Karabakh negotiating process. One of them has claimed that Pashinian
inherited “one of the best ever” peace plans on Karabakh and
internationally-backed Armenian-Azerbaijani understandings on strengthening the
ceasefire in the conflict zone. The pro-government paper dismisses these
claims, saying that the peace plan cited by the HHK calls for Armenian
withdrawal from “liberated territories” without an immediate agreement on
Karabakh’s internationally recognized status. “If this is the best ever package
then the HHK must officially state that it was and is still ready to cede the
liberated territories,” it says.
“Hraparak” accuses the Armenian Foreign Ministry of breaching Armenian grammar
rules to extol last year’s “Velvet Revolution” and thus please Pashinian. The
paper claims that the new authorities are thus following in the footsteps of
their predecessors.
Interviewed by “Zhoghovurd,” Mikael Zolian, a parliament deputy from the ruling
My Step alliance, admits that he and his pro-government colleagues disagree on
some policy issues and the Amulsar mining project in particular. “But I don’t
think this is a big deal or that there is a danger of a split [within the
bloc’s parliamentary faction,]” he says, adding that its members are free to
express their opinions. Zolian also reaffirms his opposition to the Amulsar
project, which is supported by other deputies representing My Step.
“Zhamanak” asks Suren Abrahamian, a former Armenian interior minister, to
comment on a government bill aimed at tackling the “criminal subculture” in the
country. Abrahamian seems supportive of the measure, saying that the new
government is committed to enforcing law and order. But he also insists that
notorious crime figures, known as “thieves-in-law” in the former Soviet Union,
“have never been a problem” for Armenian law-enforcement bodies.
(Sargis Harutyunyan)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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