Category: 2018

                                        Thursday, 

Armenian Gas Operator Accused Of Tax Evasion

        • Anush Muradian

Armenia - The Gazprom Armenia headquarters in Yerevan, 31Oct2014.

Tax authorities have accused Armenia’s national gas distribution owned by 
Russia’s Gazprom giant of evading millions of dollars worth of taxes.

The State Revenue Committee (SRC) announced the launch of criminal proceedings 
against the Gazprom Armenia operator on Wednesday. The SRC claimed that the 
company inflated its expenditures and underreported its earnings in 2016 and 
2017. It said that translated into “several billion drams” in unpaid taxes.

No Gazprom Armenia executives have been formally charged yet.

The head of the SRC’s investigative division, Eduard Hovannisian, told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) on Thursday that tax inspectors are still 
“ascertaining” the scale of the alleged tax evasion. “The criminal 
investigation has only just started,” he said.

Gazprom Armenia strongly denied the accusations. “I insist that they are 
baseless,” its chief executive, Hrant Tadevosian, told a news conference.

“Our company has repeatedly received SRC certificates of a ‘law-abiding 
taxpayer,’ most recently in September,” he said.

Tadevosian also accused the government agency comprising the Armenian tax and 
customs services of damaging the gas operator’s business reputation. He claimed 
that the criminal case has called into serious question Gazprom Armenia’s plans 
to obtain a multimillion-dollar loan from a Russian commercial bank.

The SRC brought the tax fraud case amid ongoing negotiations between the 
Armenian government and Gazprom on the price of Russian natural gas delivered 
to Armenia. The most recent Russian-Armenian gas agreement set the price at 
$150 per thousand cubic meters. It expires in December.

The government hopes that Gazprom will cut the tariff or at least keep it 
unchanged. The Russian gas monopoly has given no such indications so far.




Pashinian Demands Clean Elections

        • Nane Sahakian

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian holds a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, 18 
October 2018.

Prime Minister on Nikol Pashinian on Thursday told relevant government bodies 
to ensure the freedom and fairness of Armenia’s upcoming general elections 
which he is expected to win by a landslide.

“We must not just hold the best elections in the history of the Third 
[Armenian] Republic. We must hold elections meeting the highest international 
standards,” he said at a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.

In this context, Pashinian warned against any abuse of government levers that 
could influence the election outcome. He said that civil servants, school 
teachers and other public sector employees must not be forced to campaign for 
any political force, something which was commonplace in past Armenian elections.

Pashinian went on to warn that any election official miscounting ballots or 
committing other types of fraud would be strictly punished. He also ordered 
law-enforcement bodies to prevent vote buying, which was reportedly widespread 
in the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017.

The Armenian police chief, Valeri Osipian, has already promised tough action 
against any attempts to hand out vote bribes. He issued similar warnings ahead 
of the September municipal elections in Yerevan that were marked by very few 
reports of serious fraud.

In their assessment of the 2017 polls won by Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican 
Party, Western observers cited “credible information about vote-buying and 
pressure on civil servants and employees of private companies.”

Pashinian tops the list of his My Step alliance’s candidates for the December 9 
snap elections. The bloc is widely regarded as the election favorite thanks to 
the 43-year-old premier’s popularity.




Former Sarkisian Bodyguard Again Arrested

        • Arus Hakobian

Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (L) and his chief bodyguard Vachagan 
Ghazarian, 11 July 2015.

A high-ranking officer who headed former President Serzh Sarkisian’s security 
detail for over two decades was again arrested on Thursday almost five months 
after being charged with corruption.

Vachagan Ghazarian stands accused of failing to declare to a state 
anti-corruption body more than $2.5 million in cash that was mostly held in his 
and his wife’s bank accounts.

Ghazarian was obliged to do that in his capacity as deputy head of a security 
agency providing bodyguards to Armenia’s leaders. He held that position until 
the end of May.

Ghazarian, was first detained on June 25 five days after police raided his 
apartment in Yerevan and found $1.1 million and 230,000 euros ($267,000) in 
cash there. The National Security Service (NSS) said he carried a further 
$120,000 and 436 million drams ($900,000) in a bag when he was caught outside a 
commercial bank in Yerevan.

A district court in Yerevan promptly allowed investigators to keep Ghazarian 
under pre-trial arrest on charges of illegal enrichment and false asset 
disclosure. But Armenia’s Court of Appeals ordered his release from custody on 
July 20 after he offered to post a 1 billion-dram ($2.1 million) bail.

The higher Court of Cassation struck down that ruling on Thursday following an 
appeal lodged by prosecutors. The Special Investigative Service (SIS), a 
law-enforcement body conducting the high-profile probe, took him into custody 
later in the day.

Ghazarian’s lawyer could not be reached for comment. The once influential 
officer denies the accusations leveled against him. He is the first person in 
Armenia facing such charges.

Sarkisian has still not publicly commented on the corruption case against one 
of his most trusted men.




Kocharian Risks Renewed Arrest


Armenia -- Former President Robert Kocharian gives an interview to the Russian 
NTV channel, Yerevan, 28Aug2018.

Armenia’s Court of Cassation overturned on Thursday a lower court’s decision in 
August to release former President Robert Kocharian from custody following coup 
charges leveled against him.

Kocharian was controversially arrested on July 27 on charges stemming from the 
deadly breakup of opposition demonstrations during the final weeks of his 
1998-2008 rule.

He is specifically accused of illegally using the armed forces against 
opposition supporters who protested against alleged fraud in a disputed 
presidential election held in February 2008. Law-enforcement authorities say 
that amounted to an overthrow of the constitutional order.

Eight protesters and two police personnel were killed when security forces 
quelled those protests on March 1-2, 2018.

Kocharian strongly denies the accusations, saying that Armenia’s current 
government is waging a political “vendetta” against him.

The Court of Appeals freed the 64-year-old ex-president on August 13, saying 
that the Armenian constitution gives him immunity from prosecution in 
connection with the 2008 violence. Both state prosecutors and Kocharian 
appealed against that ruling. The latter claimed that there were also other 
legal grounds for his release.

The Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of criminal justice, 
rejected Kocharian’s appeal and only partly met the prosecutors’ demands. It 
ordered the Court of Appeals to examine the case anew. This means that the 
ex-president will not be held in detention pending another court ruling on his 
pre-trial arrest.

Kocharian announced his return to active politics just days after his release 
from prison. He has since repeatedly accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s 
government of endangering the country’s national security, undermining its 
relations with Russia and lacking economic programs. Still, he has decided not 
run in snap parliamentary elections slated for December 9.

Pashinian, who played a key role in the 2008 protests, has strongly defended 
the criminal case against Kocharian. “All murderers will go to prison,” he 
declared on August 17.

 


Press Review



“Haykakan Zhamanak” says the upcoming parliamentary elections will be 
significantly different from past Armenian elections not just because there 
will be no more vote buying and abuse of administrative resources but also 
because they will lack a “political component.” The paper edited by Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s wife says that campaign platforms of the election 
contenders will hardly of interest to voters this time around. It says this 
will be especially true for the former ruling Republican Party (HHK). Also, it 
says, Armenians supporting Pashinian’s My Step bloc will not really care about 
its election manifesto. They will vote for My Step simply because they “pin 
great hopes on Nikol Pashinian,” according to the paper.

“Past” notes that a number of well-known parties have decided not to 
participate in the December 9 elections. They claim to be thus giving Pashinian 
and his team a chance to live up to the popular expectations. The paper laughs 
off these explanations, arguing that none of these parties can win more than 1 
percent of the vote at the moment. “These forces and politicians need to 
realize that if they give someone a chance then that someone is themselves,” it 
says. “By not participating [in the elections] those forces are getting a 
chance not to vanish from the political arena and to take part in future 
political cycles.”

“Zhoghovurd” reports that Belarus’s ambassador to Azerbaijan has briefed 
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on recent developments relating to the 
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The paper views this as a 
further manifestation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s 
pro-Azerbaijani stance.

(Lilit Harutiunian)

 Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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