2018 September 17

Anti-Corruption Daily

Anti-Corruption Sep/17/2018: Employees of various ministries and government-funded organizations are charged with corruption and falsification of documents; SIS conducts raids in audio leak case, Yerevan elections intensify, 🔥🔥🔥 MORE BELOW
by ar_david_hh

Disclaimer: All the accused are innocent until proven guilty by the court of law, even if they may sound as being guilty. Currency in Armenian Drams ֏ unless specified otherwise.

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The police has launched a criminal investigation against the government-funded Theatrical Institute employees for causing AMD 12.5mln in damages to the state. They are accused of falsifying documents and hiring 3 non-existent employees to embezzles the salaries. Documents were falsified to make it appear they’ve rented a work car and spent money on upkeep. https://armlur.am/839729/

Ministry of Nature Protection’s water commission head is charged with abuse of power and corruption, for using his position to benefit his personal business. Companies that needed to get a license for water delivery related work, were required to purchase services from his company. Those that didn’t, faced obstacles and didn’t get licenses. The services he provided were more expensive than the market rate. The case is launched after another employee came forward and testified about the alleged crime. https://news.am/arm/news/471406.html

The judge approves search warrants in 6 addresses as part of the audio leak investigation. One of them is the Kocharyan-allied Yerevan Today website headquarters, which was one of the first agencies that reported the audio leak on September 11th. The investigators believe the article with the link to the unlisted YouTube video (meaning only the leaker knew of its existence) was published 2 days before the video itself was made public, but quickly removed, to be published again later. Investigators suspect the news agency could have obtained the unlisted video URL because they have ties to the leaker. The publisher insists they published the article after few other outlets did, but the search engines showed an incorrect information, making it appear as if it was published 2 days earlier. It should be noted that what the publisher says hold some truth and it's not unheard of for Google search to index incorrect publishing dates if the web server was configured incorrectly, but this doesn't explain the situation if the article was removed and re-published again at a later time. Because the investigation target is a news agency, The Human Rights Ombudsman has contacted the Investigative commission with a request to clarify the situation. http://investigative.am/news/view/vanecyan-qrgorc-xuzarkutyun.html ----- follow-up article http://investigative.am/news/view/xuzarkutyun-gaxtnalsum.html

Several former army officers write an open letter to Pashinyan where they accuse Robert Kocharyan and few others of stealing the Officer's House, which was a state-run organization that provided education and other aid to military families. On 2007, it was privatized. The officers insist it was done illegally by the Kocharyan clan http://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/144433

Yelq president Lena Nazaryan says she's received information from citizens about voter bribery, and has submitted the information to the authorities. The prosecutor's office has confirmed that they've referred the case to the police for more investigation https://armlur.am/839737/

BHK is concerned about their municipality candidate Naira Zohrabyan receiving criticism on Facebook. They’ll contact EU to report hate speech towards her. BHK earlier accused QP (Pashinyan bloc) for having HHK-linked persons in their municipality election lists. Yelq president called it a black PR, said all their members were revolution participants who demanded HHK’s resignation. After this incident, many online users weren’t happy with BHK’s accusations https://armenpress.am/arm/news/947435/

How do Yerevan elections work? Over 960 candidates from various parties are running for 65 seats in Municipality Council. The council votes for a mayor. It's similar to Parliamentary elections, where the residents elect a party instead of one individual.

My Step: QP's folks headed by Actor Hayk Marutyan; Nikol Pashinyan party.

BHK: My Step's main opponents headed by Naira Zohrabyan, journalist Petros Ghazaryan; Gagik Tsarukyan party.

Luys Alliance - Justice Minister Artak Zeynalyan, other Yelq politicians. QP's allies.

Smaller players: ARF, Heritage, OEK, Yerkir Tsirani who are trying to get enough votes to have a representation in the Municipality Council.

The daily life continues as usual in the Tavus village that was earlier fired upon by the enemy soldiers. The farmers harvested the crops. http://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/144403

Border Customs will allow visitors to bring more tax-free products, regardless of point of entry. 3x more "green" products, 10x dairy and meat, etc https://youtu.be/apBXmfPWi68?t=607

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Link to original report and comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/armenia/comments/9gnc44/anticorruption_sep172018_employees_of_various/