Category: 2017

Edward Nalbandian comments on Ilham Aliyev’s statements

Lara Antonian
Panorama, Armenia

For the first time the Minsk Group Co-Chairs pointed Azerbaijan was the violator of the ceasefire regime by opening fire the first, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian stated at a press conference with the OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier on Monday, commenting on the OSCE Minsk Group recent statement on ceasefire violation incidents http://www.osce.org/minsk-group/318171.

Asked whether the statement, containing targeted messages to Azerbaijan may keep Baku from further ceasefire violations, Minister Nalbandian noted Azerbaijan opposes to the establishment of the investigation mechanism into the ceasefire violation incidents for the same reason – not to allow the Co-Chairs and participant to the mechanism to identify the violator and the side that opened fire the first.
 
“It is clear even without an investigation mechanism, the latest statement [of the Minsk Group] came to show that as well,” noted Nalbandian, adding previous statement by the Co-Chairs also targeted Azerbaijan though indirectly.
The minister recalled calls for avoiding to escalate the situation in the region, to reiterate the commitment for the peaceful resolution of the conflict, refrain from criticizing the Co-Chairing states and respect the mandate of the mediators, refuse from attempts to transfer the conflict settlement to other platforms, agree to the establishment of the investigation mechanism, etc. 
 
Nalbandian was also asked to express position on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s recent claim that Karabakh conflict should be settled within territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

“My position to that claim is the same as to other assertions from the same speech, alleging Azerbaijan is a global center of multiculturism, its respect to all fundamental rights and freedoms, human rights, it is a center of tolerance, serving example to others and other absurd statements of these series,” Nalbandian said.

“The international community has long been stressing the importance of preserving the indivisibility of the principles of non-use of force, territorial integrity, equality of the people and their right for self-determination, which are reflected, in particular, in five joint statement by the Heads of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries.” added Nalbandian.

Azerbaijani Billionaire Gives Erdogan $25 Million Oil Tanker as a ‘Gift’

Garnik Zakarian
Armenian Weekly


By Harut Sassounian on in Harut Sassounian

When Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power as Turkey’s Prime Minister in 2003, he was welcomed by the majority of Turks as a devout Muslim and honest politician, after being ruled by corrupt leaders for several decades.

(L to R) Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Mubariz Mansimov

Regrettably, as time passed, Erdogan and his fellow Islamist Party leaders (AKP) became gradually corrupted. Greed replaced their piety, and the temptation of big money was too hard to resist. The _expression_, ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” aptly describes the transformation of Erdogan into a corrupt and autocratic leader.

In a lengthy article on the website theintercept.com, Andrew Fishman disclosed the unusual circumstances of Erdogan’s family receiving a $25 million oil tanker as a gift, under a secretive offshore arrangement. This sensational revelation comes a few years after the exposure of Erdogan’s recorded telephone conversations with his son Bilal, during which he advised him how to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in cash obtained mysteriously by Erdogan.

According to Fishman, the oil tanker was donated to Erdogan by Azeri billionaire Mubariz Mansimov back in 2008, as revealed by the European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) network, composed of 49 journalists from 13 media organizations in 16 countries. “Mansimov became a Turkish citizen two years earlier and adopted a Turkish name, Mubariz Gurbanoglu, allegedly at Erdogan’s suggestion,” Fishman reported. Not surprisingly, “after the deal was struck, his business dealings in Turkey took off, including lucrative contracts with state firms.”

Mansimov also befriended Pres. Donald Trump and was an invited guest at the presidential inauguration earlier this year, as a major investor in Istanbul’s Trump Towers. “When the 39 floors of residential and office block of Trump Towers opened in Istanbul in 2009, Mansimov was the first customer — buying eight apartments, including the penthouse,” according to the website: theblacksea.eu.

Fishman’s article on the intriguing and convoluted details of how the 13,000-ton ship was donated to Erdogan was based on the Malta Files, an investigation led by EIC, using a leaked cache of 150,000 documents from a Malta-based provider of legal, financial and corporate services, as well as a scraped version of the Malta Public Register of companies. In 2007, Mansimov purchased the oil tanker Agdash in Russia and registered it in the name of Pal Shipping Trader One, a Maltese holding company. In 2008, Bumerz, a company registered in the tax haven Isle of Man [UK] co-owned by Erdogan’s son (Burak Erdogan), brother (Mustafa) and brother-in-law (Ziya Ilgen) purchased all shares for $25 million. “The next day, that firm took out an $18.4 million loan arranged by Mansimov… Documents show that Mansimov pledged to pay off the entire seven-year loan plus interest in exchange for leasing rights through 2015 (the remaining $7 million of the purchase price was paid by a close personal friend of Erdogan for reasons unknown. Mansimov’s company, which controls two-thirds of Black Sea oil shipping, extended the leasing option through 2020 for $1.2 million a year. All told, the deal amounts to a $21.2 million cash transfer from Mansimov to Erdogan’s family.”

Another source estimated the value of the oil tanker donated to the Erdogan family as $29.64 million. This website also disclosed that the “close personal friend of Erdogan” who paid $7 million for the purchase of the oil tanker is Sitki Ayan, a Turkish businessman.

 

The newspaper, Malta Today, revealed that Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, in 2012 set up eight companies in Malta to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes for his company, Calik Holdings, a massive energy, textile and construction conglomerate that earned billions of dollars in public tenders. He also opened four companies in Sweden.

Albayrak, the husband of Esra Erdogan, the President’s eldest daughter, received from a close associate an email in 2011, warning him that the secretive offshore companies are “based on tricking the finance authority; it’s not a secure system. If the finance authority discovers this, it wouldn’t be good for [Calik’s] reputation,” according to Malta Today.

In the end, it turns out that Albayrak did not need a secret offshore network because in 2015 he was appointed by Erdogan as Minister of Energy and Resources. He helped pass the “Wealth Peace Act,” a tax amnesty, which allowed Calik Holdings to repatriate unlimited amounts of offshore cash, tax-free.

Malta Today also reported that Erdogan is grooming his son-in-law Albayrak as his successor. It is not surprising that Albyarak accompanied Pres. Erdogan on his recent trip to the United States.

The reason many foreign companies are registered in Malta is that the country “boasts the lowest effective corporate tax rate [5%] in the European Union and has become a preferred destination for tax avoidance in the EU,” whereas in France, for example, the corporate tax rate is 33.33%, according to Fishman.

Armenia and India Build Strategic Relationship

Emil Lazarian
Modern Tokyo Times, Japan


Armenia and India Build Strategic Relationship

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor

By: Eduard Abrahamyan

The Jamestown Foundation

With Azerbaijan and Pakistan currently pursuing a strategic partnership (see EDM, September 28, 2016; December 15, 2016), Armenia and India have decided to step up their cooperation across several dimensions. Indeed, the past six months were marked by a visible reinvigoration of Armenian-Indian bilateral ties, which culminated with a visit to Yerevan, on April 24, of a high-level Indian delegation led by Vice President M. Hamid Ansari (Gov.am, April 24). The Indian vice president held meetings with Armenia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan and President Serzh Sargsyan. The meetings resulted in the signing of three important agreements.

Notably, the two sides agreed to a cultural exchange program for 2017–2020 as well as collaboration in youth affairs. Moreover, they acknowledged their close partnership in the information technology (IT) sector, exemplified by the operation of the Armenian-Indian Excellence Center in Information and Communication Technologies, founded in 2010 (Parliament.am, January 12, 2010). However, the most interesting agreement is related to India’s intention to build an Earth observation satellite (EOS) for Armenia. Under this deal, New Delhi also agreed to train Armenian scientists in the use of the system and handling and interpreting its data. Reportedly, the satellite will be operated by a joint Armenian-Indian group of specialists, serving the needs of both countries (Gov.am, Business Standard, April 25; Spacewatchme.com, April 28).

Armenia has sought its own observation satellite since 2011, and has approached both Western countries and Russia as potential partners for cooperation. Then, in 2016, Yerevan procured the Iskander-E short-range, land-mobile ballistic missile system from Moscow (see EDM, October 5, 2016), which added further motivation for Armenia to gain access to its own Earth observation satellite. Even though EOSs are predominantly devoted to peaceful purposes, such satellites could likely also be used to provide guidance, navigation and control services for various military operations. From this perspective, the cooperation with India on a shared EOS becomes particularly important against the background of Armenia’s mounting standoff with Azerbaijan. The escalatory military rhetoric, progressively amplified by officials in Yerevan and Baku, has pushed Armenia to openly declare it could use its Iskander-E system for “active” (in other words, pre-emptive) defense measures (President.am, March 25). This boosts India’s importance for Armenia, as their partnership on satellite data collection and analysis can help make the latter country less dependent on Russia—Armenia’s critical security ally that plays an ambivalent if not fomenting role in the Karabakh dispute.

Also during his April 2017 visit, Indian Vice President Ansari touched upon further steps needed to deepen political dialogue and economic ties with Armenia. He emphasized ramping up contacts between the two countries’ businessmen as well as intensifying bilateral collaboration in the spheres of high technologies, education, culture, agriculture and health (Aravot, April 25).

According to reports, both parties seek to foster mutually beneficial comprehensive strategic cooperation (Asbarez, April 25). The solid groundwork for such an intensive alignment was allegedly laid out as early as 2011, when two large Armenian delegations, led by Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian and subsequently by then–National Security Council Secretary Artur Bagdasaryan, visited New Delhi. Since then, India has repeatedly stressed its interest in investing in Armenia’s military industry complex and establishing a joint arms production consortium (Panorama, April 3, 2011).

Aside from Ansari’s formal working meetings with Armenian officials last month, the Indian side made a particularly notable gesture. The Indian delegation paid a visit to the Armenian Genocide museum-memorial, just days ahead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s trip to India, scheduled for April 30. Ansari paid homage to the dead there (Times of India, April 27). But although India has clearly been taking certain steps toward officially recognizing the early 20th century Armenian massacres in Turkey as a “genocide,” it is careful to maintain its positive high-level relations with Ankara intact.

For years, Azerbaijan and Pakistan have been coordinating their positions within various international organizations in order to speak with one voice regarding the disputes in Karabakh as well as in Jumma and Kashmir (see EDM, December 15, 2016). In turn, Armenia and India also increasingly demonstrate reciprocal solidarity when it comes to discussions of these unresolved disputes in international platforms. As a case in point, India (along with Armenia, the United States, Russia and four other countries) firmly opposed the United Nations General Assembly’s Resolution 62/243, adopted in March 14, 2008 (Un.org, March 14, 2008). According to Yerevan, the draft resolution ostensibly expressed a one-sided, anti-Armenian interpretation of the ongoing developments in the breakaway region of Karabakh. Furthermore, Armenian and Indian officials repeatedly underscore the importance of coordinating a common stance on the international stage over both the Karabakh and Kashmir conflicts (Hetq, November 12, 2010).

Looking ahead, Yerevan and New Delhi are preparing to sign a “strategic” accord focused on partnership in defense and security. The pending document will cover mutual support and military cooperation. The agreement is supposed to be forged later this year, during Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s visit to India (, April 25).

BAKU: Azeri, Armenian FMs may next meet in Prague

Sports: Man Utd ace Mkhitaryan honoured by Armenia’s first-class medal of services

Garo Vardanian
Tribal Football


by Paul Vegas 

image: https://images.tribalfootball.com/default/0001/04/thumb_3509_default_medium.jpeg

Manchester United midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan has been honoured by Armenia.

The seven-time Armenian footballer of the year was awarded a first-class medal of services to the motherland on Sunday at a ceremony in Yerevan.

Mkhitaryan, Armenia's captain and record goalscorer, was among those recognised by president Serzh Sargsyan at the Armenian Presidential Palace.

“I won't compare the medal with any goal, you can't compare those things," he said after the ceremony.

"When Serzh Sargsyan was handing me the medal, he thanked me for good representation of Armenia."


Sports: Armenian athletes become champions at Georgian Athletics Championship

Alex Nanijanian
Panorama, Armenia

Members of Armenia's Athletics Team Lilit Harutyunyan and Ellada Alaverdyan became champions at Georgian Athletics Championship, Panorama.am reports, citing the Armenian National Olympic Committee.

Lilit Harutyunyan took the first place in 400m race discipline, while Ellada Alaverdyan – in 1500m discipline.

Narine Shahbazyan, Secretary General of the Armenian Athletics Federation, noted that the championship is being held at a gym due to the lack of stadiums, which are currently hosting football matches.

Currently the Armenian team is preparing for the European Athletics Team Championships. Prior to that, Armenian athletes Gayane Chiloyan, Angelina Avagyan, Ellada Alaverdyan, David Sargsyan and Yura Khachatryan will take part in the Balkan Cross Country Championships in Istanbul on June 3.

Sports: Armenian athletes win gold at Georgian Athletics Championship

Jane Topchian
PanArmenian, Armenia
– 19:47 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Members of Armenia's Athletics Team won gold at Georgian Athletics Championship.

Lilit Harutyunyan and Ellada Alaverdyan scored first places in 1500m and 400m race disciplines respectively, Armenia’s National Olympic Committee reports.

Narine Shahbazyan, Secretary General of the Armenian Athletics Federation, noted that the championship is being held at a gym due to the lack of stadiums, which are currently hosting football matches.

The Armenian team is currently training for the European Athletics Team Championships. Prior to that, Armenian athletes Gayane Chiloyan, Angelina Avagyan, Ellada Alaverdyan, David Sargsyan and Yura Khachatryan will take part in the Balkan Cross Country Championships in Istanbul on June 3.

Sports: Armenian swimming team wins 70% of medals at Georgian Championship

Emil Lazarian
PanArmenian, Armenia
– 20:08 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – The Under-14 Armenian swimming team showed great results at a Tbilisi-hosted Georgian Championship on May 27-28.

Armenia was represented by 16 swimmers who, however, won 70% of all awards – 32 gold, 10 silver and 10 bronze medals.

Among the winning athletes were: Michael Shakhnazarov and Taron Skizas (6 gold medals each); Eva Karapetyan (5 gold, 1 silver), Lusine Vasilyan (3 gold, 2 silver) and Syuzanna Grigoryan (3 gold, 1 silver).

Budapest will host 2017 World Aquatics Championships on July 16-30, with 4 swimmers to represent Armenia.

Chess: 19 Armenian players to take part in European Championship

Mary Lazarian
Panorama, Armenia

European Individual Chess Championship (men) will be held in Minsk, Belarus from 29 May to 10 June. The chess tournament, which will be held in 11-round Swiss system, involves 398 participants, with the best 22 qualifying for the World Cup.

As Panorama.am was informed from the official website of the Armenian National Olympic Committee, 19 Armenian chess players led by GMs Sergei Movsesian, Gabriel Sargsyan, Hrant Melkumyan, Zaven Andriasian and Arman Pashikyan will represent Armenia in the tournament.

Round 1 of the championship is scheduled on 30 May.

Chess: European Championship to host 19 Armenian chess players

Bedik Zaminian
PanArmenian, Armenia
– 13:50 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – 19 Armenian chess players will participate in the European Individual Chess Championship 2017 due May 29-June 10 in Minsk, Belarus.

The championship is played in 11-round Swiss system, with the time control 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one.

The European Individual Championship 2017 is a qualification event for the next World Cup. According to FIDE regulations and the decision of the ECU Board, 22 players will qualify.

The Armenian squad is headed by GMs Sergei Movsesian, Gabriel Sargissian, Hrant Melkumyan, Zaven Andriasian and Arman Pashikian.

The first round of the championship will kick off May 30, Armenia’s National Olympic Committee reports.

Film: Amen, epic drama about Armenian people, to premiere in Yerevan, Armenia June 23

Emil Lazarian
Panorama, Armenia

Amen, an Armenian epic drama initiated by AMEN Project, will premiere at Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concerts Complex on June 23. As the organizing company informs, the show is dedicated to the history of the Armenian people, its values and the unique place in the history of civilization.

Amen show is an epic drama about the historical journey of the Armenian nation, its origin and faith, cultural bias and values. The main objective of the epic drama is to show that in spite of suffering losses and hardships, the Armenian people continue to love, create and enjoy the life.

Amen is a unique musical project. It upholds the Armenian musical traditions, presenting them in the format of the modern stage show, where the original musical libretto and traditional ballet are combined with modern stage technologies.

In August 2017, Amen show-performance will be shown in Verona, Italy. Later on, it will hit the stages of the largest cities in the world – London, Paris, New York, etc. Amen will be accompanied by other events, namely photo exhibitions and performances, cultural meetings, etc.

The participants of the project are Hovhannes Ayvazyan (tenor, Armenia), Hrachuhi Bassenz (soprano, Germany), David Babayants (baritone, Armenia), Juliette Galstian (mezzo soprano, Switzerland), Gevorg Dabaghyan (duduk player, Armenia), Berch Karazian (lyric tenor, Armenia), Rosy Anoush Svazlian, (soprano, US, Italy), Hasmik Torosyan (soprano, Italy, Armenia), Barsegh Tumanyan (bass, Armenia, Kazakhstan), Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra (principal conductor and artistic director Eduard Topchjan), "Hover" State Chamber Choir (artistic director Sona Hovhannisyan), Narek Dance Ensemble and the others.