LE CAFE DE PARIS OWNER TO RETURN TO YEREVAN SOLELY TO SELL HER BUSINESS
epress.am
01.10.2012
In one month, owner of Le Cafe de Paris Ashkhen Valerie Gordzounian
will come to Armenia in order to sell her cafe and return to France,
the owner of the Yerevan-based cafe, who is currently in Paris,
told Epress.am.
Gordzounian expressed her indignation at a recent statement by RA
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan in an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian
service in which he said that the issues tied to Le Cafe de Paris are
being saddled on the state, and in cases of tax evasion, the state
must stand its ground. “And no political pressure, public pressure
or attempts at causing misunderstanding among the public should have
an effect on it,” he said.
The cafe owner, however, asserts that the charges of tax evasion are
false, citing the 80 million drams (approx. $207,200 USD) in taxes
she paid in Sept. 2010.
“Yes, I paid my taxes, and I’m not leaving Armenia because everything
is good, or I have so much money that I’m fleeing. They wrote the deed
after which I asked to be allowed to pay the added 0.15% gradually. I
went to see head of the Presidential Oversight Service Hovhannes
Hovsepyan: he told me, wait, I will tell you, and he did nothing;
he didn’t even call. Then I wrote a letter to the prime minister – he
did the same thing. Meanwhile, the amount of this deed was increasing.
When I saw that it was hopeless, I was forced to sell 50% of my factory
in order to pay the 80 million, and I paid it in Sept. 2010,” she said.
“What were they saying, that I came to steal from my country? Instead,
I could’ve stayed much more comfortably in Paris. And today my property
would’ve been greater. What did the state do? It seems to me that it
would be better for them if I left; perhaps I talk too much or I’m
in the way, but during [the] Karabakh [War], I wasn’t in the way or
when they came to France…,” she continued.
Gordzounian is also indignant toward Diaspora Minister Hranush
Hakobyan, who “not even once took an interest in this matter.”