ArmInfo. Major-General Armen Harutyunyan, the former Head of the Missile and Artillery Troops/Head of the RA Armed Forces department, was arrested.
According to the press service of the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia, Harutyunyan was arrested in the framework of a criminal case being investigated by the National Security Service.
According to the source, in the course of investigative measures, it was established that the chairman of the Commission for the receipt of goods supplied under the contract signed by the RA Ministry of Defense and a company operating in the country, Armen Harutyunyan, with the intention of stealing a particularly large amount of money from the RA Ministry of Defense, provided assistance to the director of the supplier company and the owner in the process of accepting property that does not correspond to the subject of the contract.
The National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia noted that Harutyunyan, instead of the shells for artillery specified in the contract, by hiding the fact of a discrepancy between the tactical and technical characteristics of the delivered property, purchased Czech-made shells for a total amount of 523,089,000 drams ($ 1,083,000), which, according to their tactical and technical characteristics were significantly inferior to those shells that were provided for by the contract.
In particular, the range of hitting the target was not ensured, the errors of hitting the targets turned out to be much higher than the norm, the shells did not correspond to the gravitational characteristics of the artillery shells available on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense and the parameters of the firing schedules of the RA Armed Forces. "Consequently, when using artillery, it was impossible to conduct aimed fire from the above-mentioned projectiles and perform combat missions. As a result, on the basis of the signed contract, 1,083,000 US dollars were transferred to the company's account, which entailed severe financial consequences for the state," they noted.
The department noted that the specified batch of shells was used during the 44-day war, and in view of the abovementioned shortcomings, it did not allow to fulfill the assigned combat missions. "In the framework of the abovementioned case, charges were also brought against the director of the supplier company and the owner," the NSS noted, adding that investigations in the framework of the criminal case are ongoing and steps are being taken to establish the full range of persons involved in the corruption scheme and bring them to justice.