Offshore scenes

23/09/2008

Yesterday the president of the Audit Chamber Ishkhan Zakaryan presented the results of the audit in the ministries of development planning and agriculture and the program of central heating of the city, financed by the World Bank. Besides, Zakaryan said in a week the results of the audit of the regional administration and communities, and in ten days the results of the audit of the police will be presented. For example, only last year the Audit Chamber revealed misuse of 240 million drams out of 930 million AMD programs of the Ministry of Urban Development. In agriculture the Audit Chamber revealed misuse of over 284 million drams. The Audit Chamber also revealed misuse in two directions of the urban central heating program financed by the World Bank: restoration of the central heating of blocks of apartments and heating systems for underprivileged families. For the first direction, money was transferred to an offshore area to buy equipment, the money disappeared and there is no equipment. For instance a company named Erfrez, which installs heating systems in 5 buildings, he 500 thousand USD, which it received in profit, sent to Panama in order to buy some devices from some company. “Panama is an offshore zone. The money was transferred but there are no devices and the heating of the buildings works in half of its capacity and it was repaired with old parts. 2 buildings are heated and the rest not,” said Zakaryan and added that most part of the violations are done through offshore deals, which is the best way for money laundering. Let’s mention that this kind of money laundering through offshore zones is no news for Armenia and there are many such examples staring from the Golden Palace Hotel and ending with banana importation businesses.