Category: 2019

                                        Friday, 
Pashinian Wants Further Scrutiny Of Amulsar Mining Project
        • Susan Badalian
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian chairs a video conference of Armenian 
officials and representatives of the Lebanese-based consulting firm ELARD, 
Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian cited the need for further evaluation of 
possible mining operations at Armenia’s Amulsar gold deposit on Friday after a 
Lebanese-based consulting firm raised more questions about its environmental 
audit of the project.
Joined by Armenian government and law-enforcements officials, lawmakers and 
Armenian executives of the British-registered mining company Lydian 
International, Pashinian held on Thursday a video conference with experts from 
the ELARD consultancy contracted by his government in February. The experts 
were asked to give additional explanations of ELARD’s report on the Amulsar 
project submitted to Armenia’s Investigative Committee earlier this month.
The committee cited the report as concluding that toxic waste from the would-be 
mine is extremely unlikely to contaminate mineral water sources in the nearby 
spa resort of Jermuk or rivers and canals flowing into Lake Sevan.
According to the law-enforcement agency, ELARD found greater environmental 
risks for other rivers in the area but said they can be minimized if Lydian 
takes 16 “mitigating measures” recommended by ELARD. Lydian expressed readiness 
to take virtually of all those measures.
ELARD experts offered a different interpretation of their report during the 
video conference, however. They said that they cannot definitively evaluate the 
Amulsar project’s potential impact on the environment because Lydian had 
submitted flawed and incomplete information to the Armenian authorities.
“We could not evaluate that because of all the flaws,” one of them, Nidal 
Rabah, said during the two-and-a-half hour discussion publicized by the 
government on Friday. “[Lydian’s] social and environmental assessment, research 
and investigation are not credible,” he added.
This left some of the Armenian lawmakers participating in the video conference 
wondering why ELARD proposed the “mitigating measures” if it thought that 
Lydian’s project is flawed.
For his part, Hayk Grigorian, the head of the Investigative Committee, 
maintained that based on the ELARD report his investigators have no grounds to 
indict anyone in their criminal inquiry into a government agency that gave the 
green light for the Amulsar project in April 2016.
The inquiry was initiated by Pashinian shortly after environmental protesters 
began blocking in June 2018 the roads leading to Amulsar. It was meant to 
establish whether government officials dealing with Amulsar had withheld 
important information from the public.
“Mr. Prime Minister, no information was concealed,” said Yura Ivanian, the 
chief investigator also present at the discussion.
Pashinian seemed unconvinced by these assurances. “Why is it that ELARD experts 
saw flaws in that data [provided by Lydian] while our Environment Ministry 
officials did not?” he asked.
Grigorian replied that the flaws alleged by ELARD can be “neutralized” if 
Lydian takes the safety measures contained in the report.
Concluding the discussion, Pashinian said that the government will now wait and 
see whether the Armenian Ministry of Environment decides to order Lydian to 
draw up another environmental impact assessment and submit it to a relevant 
ministry division for approval. Environment Minister Erik Grigorian confirmed 
that the decision will be announced by September 4.
Commenting on the video conference on his Facebook page on Friday, Pashinian 
said it exposed “a number of new circumstances which require investigation and 
evaluation.”
Meanwhile, Lydian’s chief executive in Armenia, Hayk Aloyan, described the 
conference as “the most unprofessional discussion I have ever been to in my 
life.” In a social media post, he claimed that the ELARD experts have “zero or 
limited experience in the mining sector” and “couldn’t explain what standards 
were breached by the company.”
Armenian PM Vows Tougher Fight Against Corruption
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian chairs a session of the 
Anti-Corruption Policy Council, Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Friday again claimed to have eliminated 
“systemic corruption” in Armenia while saying that Armenians expect a tougher 
anti-graft fight from the authorities.
“The fight against corruption, investigations into corruption-related crimes 
and especially the recoveries of damage caused by corruption are not unfolding 
on a scale which we and the public have the right to expect,” he said. “There 
are many objective and subjective problems here and institutional problems are 
not the least important of them.”
The authorities should step up that fight by creating “new institutional 
structures,” Pashinian told government officials and civil society 
representatives making up an anti-corruption advisory council headed by him. In 
that context, he praised an anti-graft strategy and a three-year plan of 
actions stemming from it drafted by the Armenian Justice Ministry in June.
Speaking at the council meeting, Justice Minister Rustam Badasian said both 
documents, which will be submitted to the government for approval, have been 
amended since then. He said they continue to call for the creation of 
anti-corruption courts and a special law-enforcement agency empowered to 
prosecute state officials suspected of bribery, fraud and other corrupt 
practices.
The proposed Anti-Corruption Committee would inherit most of its powers from 
the existing Special Investigative Service (SIS), a law-enforcement body tasked 
with combatting various crimes committed by state officials. A key SIS division 
dealing corruption and abuse of power would be incorporated into the committee.
In Badasian’s words, these and other anti-graft measures should significantly 
improve Armenia’s position in Transparency International’s global Corruption 
Perceptions Index (CPI).
Armenia ranked, together with Macedonia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, 107th out of 180 
countries and territories evaluated in the 2017 CPI released shortly before 
last year’s “Velvet Revolution.”
The number or corruption investigations launched by Armenian law-enforcement 
authorities has risen significantly since the dramatic change of government. 
The most high-profile of these cases have targeted former top government 
officials and individuals linked to them.
Government Plans Tax-Free Zone In Gyumri
        • Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia -- A street in Gyumri, October 14, 2017.
The government has announced plans to set up a free economic zone in Gyumri, a 
move welcomed by the mayor of Armenia’s second largest city.
Under a bill approved by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet on Thursday, 
the tax-free zone would occupy more than 300 hectares of land adjacent to 
Gyumri’s international airport.
“The free economic zone is expected to become an important hub for logistical 
services provided in electronic commerce,” said Economy Minister Tigran 
Khachatrian. It is primarily designed to accommodate warehouses used for 
international e-commerce and foster “export-oriented manufacturing activities,” 
he added during a cabinet meeting.
Gyumri Mayor Samvel Balasanian has for years lobbied for such a measure. He 
stressed on Friday the tax haven’s economic significance for a city that has 
long been suffering from high poverty and unemployment rates.
“We are going to have new jobs and there will be lots of investments,” 
Balasanian said at a meeting with Armenia’s ambassadors abroad accompanied by 
Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Minister for Local Government Suren 
Papikian.
A government statement on the bill spoke of thousands of jobs to be created in 
Gyumri in the coming years
Armenia already has two free economic zones where companies meeting certain 
conditions are exempt from virtually all taxes. One of them was set up near 
Meghri, a small town on the country’s border with Iran, in late 2017.
The Meghri zone has attracted few Armenian, Iranian or other firms so far. The 
Armenian government blames this fact on former government officials and their 
cronies who it says had privatized land plots in and around the zone at 
disproportionately low prices and are now obstructing economic activity there. 
In Papikian’s words, the government has asked to courts to declare those 
privatization deals illegal.
Press Review
“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that representatives of the former ruling Republican 
Party of Armenia (HHK) are upset with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s latest 
criticism of his the former Armenian government’s handling of the 
Nagorno-Karabakh negotiating process. One of them has claimed that Pashinian 
inherited “one of the best ever” peace plans on Karabakh and 
internationally-backed Armenian-Azerbaijani understandings on strengthening the 
ceasefire in the conflict zone. The pro-government paper dismisses these 
claims, saying that the peace plan cited by the HHK calls for Armenian 
withdrawal from “liberated territories” without an immediate agreement on 
Karabakh’s internationally recognized status. “If this is the best ever package 
then the HHK must officially state that it was and is still ready to cede the 
liberated territories,” it says.
“Hraparak” accuses the Armenian Foreign Ministry of breaching Armenian grammar 
rules to extol last year’s “Velvet Revolution” and thus please Pashinian. The 
paper claims that the new authorities are thus following in the footsteps of 
their predecessors.
Interviewed by “Zhoghovurd,” Mikael Zolian, a parliament deputy from the ruling 
My Step alliance, admits that he and his pro-government colleagues disagree on 
some policy issues and the Amulsar mining project in particular. “But I don’t 
think this is a big deal or that there is a danger of a split [within the 
bloc’s parliamentary faction,]” he says, adding that its members are free to 
express their opinions. Zolian also reaffirms his opposition to the Amulsar 
project, which is supported by other deputies representing My Step.
“Zhamanak” asks Suren Abrahamian, a former Armenian interior minister, to 
comment on a government bill aimed at tackling the “criminal subculture” in the 
country. Abrahamian seems supportive of the measure, saying that the new 
government is committed to enforcing law and order. But he also insists that 
notorious crime figures, known as “thieves-in-law” in the former Soviet Union, 
“have never been a problem” for Armenian law-enforcement bodies.
(Sargis Harutyunyan)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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