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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