Wednesday,
Arrest Warrant Sought For Former ‘Oligarch’
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Ruben Hayrapetian, chairman of the Football Federation of Armenia,
speaks at a news conference in Yerevan, 12Jan2018.
A law-enforcement body has asked a Yerevan court to allow it to arrest Ruben
Hayrapetian, a wealthy businessman linked to Armenia’s former leadership, on
kidnapping and assault charges.
The Investigative Committee indicted Hayrapetian, his son Rafik and four other
persons earlier this month. It claimed tha in 2016 they kidnapped and
systematically beat up the chief manager of a Hayrapetian-owned resort who
allegedly misused more than 52 million drams ($108,000) borrowed from a
commercial bank controlled by the feared tycoon.
A statement released by the committee said the manager, Hayk Shahnazarian, was
held in captivity for three weeks before handing over about $50,000 worth of
cash, cars and jewelry items to his kidnappers. It said the latter also forced
him to give up a house belonging to his grandmother.
A lawyer for Hayrapetian, Amram Makinian, denied the accusations when he spoke
to RFE/RL’s Armenian service on May 19. He claimed said his client is a victim
of the “apparent crime” committed by Shahnazarian.
Hayrapetian left Armenia in March and, according to the Investigative Committee,
is currently in Moscow. A spokeswoman for the committee, Rima Yeganian, said on
Wednesday that during a recent phone conversation with an investigator he
claimed to be unable to return to Yerevan because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Yeganian dismissed that explanation, saying that the Armenian Embassy in Russia
expressed readiness to help repatriate the suspect on a special Moscow-Yerevan
flight carried out on Monday but that he did not accept the offer. Investigators
therefore believe that he simply fled prosecution, said the official.
Hayrapetian, 56, has long supported former President Serzh Sarkisian and remains
affiliated with the latter’s Republican Party. He used to represent the party in
the Armenian parliament.
The once influential tycoon, who was notorious for violent conduct, accused the
current authorities of harassing him for political reasons after being briefly
detained by the Armenian police in February. The police claimed he was taken in
for questioning on suspicion of illegal arms possession.
The detention came one day after Hayrapetian was questioned as a witness in a
criminal investigation into alleged corruption in the Football Federation of
Armenia (FFA) which he headed from 2002-2018. Masked police officers searched
his Yerevan villa in December as part of the same probe. He was not charged as a
result.
Armenian Government Moves To Raise Property Taxes
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- A new apartment block in Yerevan.
The Armenian government announced on Wednesday plans to sharply increase the
presently modest taxes collected from homeowners.
A bill approved by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet calls for
particularly drastic increases in property taxes paid by rich or affluent
Armenians.
“Today, there are luxury villas which, for example, pay 800,000 drams [in
property tax] each year,” said Pashinian. “They will have to pay 15 million
drams after we change the law. It’s obvious that for such homeowners 15 million
drams is not a big deal.”
According to the International Monetary Fund, proceeds from these taxes are
currently equivalent to just 0.2 percent of Armenia’s Gross Domestic Product, a
very low proportion not only by Western but also ex-Soviet standards.
The government expects to significantly increase them without changing the
existing progressive tax rates ranging from 0.05 percent to 1 percent. It wants
to change instead the methodology of calculating the value of properties, which
is currently based on their cadastral valuation by a government agency. Under
the government bill, the Cadaster Committee would determine it on the basis of
their market value.
The head of the committee, Suren Tovmasian, said that to his the agency will
launch an electronic database that will enable every homeowner to see the price
of their property and the calculated amount of their tax obligations.
The bill would introduce a complex progressive scale of taxation. For example,
the owners of small apartments worth an estimated 23 million drams ($48,000)
would pay 18,000 drams, while ownership of larger properties that cost 58
million drams would translate into 108,000 drams in annual taxes.
Tax authorities would levy at least 326,000 drams from luxury apartments worth
100 million drams or more. The owners of large and expensive houses would have
to pay even more.
Finance Minister Atom Janjughazian estimated that Armenia’s property tax
revenue, most of it directly channeled into local community budgets, would more
than quadruple as a result. He said local communities would therefore be the
main beneficiaries of the bill approved by the government.
The government was quick to send the bill to the Armenian parliament for urgent
debate. If passed, the proposed changes to the national tax legislation would be
introduced gradually over the next three years.
Thousands Of COVID-19 Cases Unaccounted For, Says Pashinian
Armenia -- Masked police officers patrol streets of Yerevan, May 25, 2020.
The number of people in Armenia infected with coronavirus is twice higher than
official statistics indicate, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Wednesday.
The Armenian health authorities have reported 7,774 coronavirus cases so far.
About 5 percent of them were registered on Tuesday, a further indication that
the virus is continuing to spread rapidly in the country of about 3 million
following the recent lifting of a nationwide lockdown.
The Ministry of Health reported on Wednesday morning that seven more people died
from COVID-19 in the past day, raising the official death toll to 98. It said
five other infected citizens died as a result of other, chronic illnesses. The
number of such fatalities thus rose to 44.
“There are now thousands of people in the country infected with coronavirus who
do not even know that they are carriers of the virus,” Pashinian told a cabinet
meeting held later in the day.
Pashinian said that countries around the world are able to register less than
half of COVID-19 infections. “Therefore, if there are 7,000 confirmed cases in
Armenia now, it means that there are 14,000 carriers of the virus [in reality,]”
he said, adding that the vast majority of them are asymptomatic and unaware of
being infected.
The daily numbers of new COVID-19 infections and deaths have increased steadily
and significantly since the Armenian government began lifting in mid-April
lockdown restrictions imposed in late March. All sectors of the Armenian economy
were allowed to resume their work by May 10.
Despite what Pashinian described as a “quite severe situation,” the government
has signaled no plans to again restrict people’s movements and shut down much of
the economy.
The prime minister again insisted on Wednesday that the spread of the virus can
be halted if Armenians frequently wash hands, wear face masks and practice
social distancing. He reiterated that “individual responsibility” of citizens
remains the government’s “principal tool” for tackling the disease.
Pashinian also reaffirmed his pledges to toughen the enforcement of safety rules
set by the authorities for people, businesses and other entities.
A senior official attending the cabinet meeting told him that Armenia’s Health
and Labor Inspectorate has already ordered this week one-day closures of some
290 cafes, restaurants and other business not complying with the rules. For
their part, the Armenian police claimed to have fined or reprimanded hundreds of
people who did not wear masks on buses and other enclosed spaces.
Critics of the government are skeptical about the effectiveness of the
government strategy of defeating the virus. They say that the authorities lifted
the lockdown too soon and never enforced it properly in the first place.
Parliament Majority Seeks Power To Cancel Constitutional Referendum
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- A session of the National Assembly, Yerevan, May 25, 2020.
The pro-government majority in the Armenian parliament has moved to enact
legislation that will allow it to formally cancel a planned referendum on
ousting most members of the country’s Constitutional Court.
Armenians were scheduled to vote on April 5 on government-drafted constitutional
amendments ending the powers of seven of the nine Constitutional Court judges
who had for months been under strong government pressure to resign.
The referendum was postponed on March 16 when the Armenian government declared a
state of emergency to deal with the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Earlier
this month the government extended it by another month, until June 14. Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian confirmed on May 17 that due to the pandemic the vote
will not be held anytime soon.
Under Armenian law, no elections or referendums can take place during the state
of emergency. But the authorities must hold a planned vote 50 to 65 days after
the end of emergency rule.
A bill drafted by Vahagn Hovakimian, a senior lawmaker from Pashinian’s My Step
bloc, would not only abolish this requirement but also allow the parliament
cancel a referendum altogether.
As the National Assembly began debating the bill on Wednesday Hovakimian and
other pro-government deputies insisted that it does not mean Armenia’s political
leadership will necessarily call off the controversial referendum. They said
their initiative is only aimed at eliminating ambiguities in the existing
legislation regulating the conduct of referendums.
Opposition deputies were unconvinced. One of them, Naira Zohrabian, questioned
the bill’s conformity with the Armenian constitution. She also claimed that the
authorities are afraid of not garnering a sufficient number of votes in the
referendum and are trying to get rid of the Constitutional Court judges through
the parliament controlled by them.
Parliament majority leaders indicated last week that the Pashinian
administration no longer insists on replacing all seven judges and is ready to
settle for a less radical change in the court’s composition. They said this is
why the government asked the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe this
month to help end its standoff with the high court.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.