Armenian citizens who work in abroad and want to send money to their relative hence cannot remit money through the services of Western Union.
The Central Bank board session presided by CB president Artur Javadyan on August 22 made a decision to cease the participation of all banks operating in Armenia in the Western Union remittance transactions. The banks have been instructed to terminate their contracts with the Western Union in accordance with the corresponding provisions of their contracts.
The official explanation is that the purpose of this decision is to cut down the banking risks because they have witnessed cases when the Western Union violated some of the provisions of its contract with the Armenian banks without having any reasonable explanations. Specifically, the Western Union has terminated its operations with some bank branches, which may harm the normal functioning of banks, their financial stability and result in unpredictable developments in the field of money transfer, as well as influence on the economic, financial and real sectors of the country.
Even though the statement of the Central Bank’s press department does not make the reasons clear, our readers who have read our recent publications about the news of the domestic financial market and the fact that the Western Union has terminated its activities on the territory of Nagorno Karabakh should guess what the real reason of this decision is. To note, about ten days ago Western Union, MoneyGram and a number of other famous companies occupied in money transfer transactions terminated their operations with Nagorno Karabakh and refused to conduct business activities there. It happened in the result of the efforts of Azerbaijan when it pressed on the mentioned companies and terminated its cooperation with them until they would terminate their activities in Karabakh. These companies did the requirement of Azerbaijan even though they knew that Armenia would be against such decision.
The president of the Central Bank of Armenia Vache Gabriyelyan told our newspaper that they were examining the case and would let us know about their decision soon. He assured that if it turned out that their decision had been motivated by political reasons the Armenian party would give an adequate payback and the results would be bad for them. “If they fail to give reasonable explanations, we can consider it a politically motivated decision,” said the CB president.
Now the answer is clear and as we can see it is very adequate. However we wander why this decision concerns the Western Union only if the other companies have terminated their activities in Karabakh as well. “There are companies occupied in money transfer and we are working with all of them and examining their past performance to see who works well, how long they work, etc. We will let you know when we have final information. Now we are examining all that information and will let you know about our decisions and answer,” said Mr. Gabriyelyan one week ago.
In fact, based on the CB president’s words we may assume that either the CB has finished only the case of the Western Union or does not see any political motives in the decisions of the Money Gram and other companies. It is worth mentioning that neither of these two options is reasonable. First, Mr. Gabriyelyan said that they would have final conclusions and decision only when they finish examining the performance of all those companies. Second, the operations of these systems are interconnected and their activities both in Karabakh and Azerbaijan were terminated jointly for all those companies. In other words, ultimately we can’t say that only the decision of the Western Union is politically motivated. If so, what is the reason why the CB terminated the activities of this company only? Logically we may say that the CB has managed to come to an agreement with the other companies except for the Western Union. If so, it is not excluded that in the nearest future we may learn that the Money Gram and other companies have started transferring money to Karabakh again. It is not also excluded that the national bank of Azerbaijan may terminate the activities of the mentioned companies again and grant the right of activities to the Western Union only. In fact it turns out that the international companies involved in money transfer transactions are being divided into two parts, one of which will serve Armenia and the other part Azerbaijan. Certainly these are mere assumptions, however the fact is that in the recent period such companies have been faced with a choice to work either with Armenia or with Azerbaijan. It seems that there are no other options and it doesn’t matter whether those companies like us or not, they will make their final decision based on calculations where they can make more money: in Armenia or in Azerbaijan. Ultimately we can’t accuse them in their decision because their decision is interest-based.