Roza Melkumyan, who died on September 2 of 2005, four years after her death wrote a letter to the state social service on July 2 2009 and received 1 million 24 thousand 494 AMD pension. However, the daughter-in-law of the late lady Iskuhi Martirosyan made a statement that her dead mother-in-law didn’t virtually receive any pension. But this money was included in the payment lists of the social fund and there is the signature of the pension receiver there. This is not a bad joke and neither is it a detective genre story. More accurately this is the connection of the dead should with our world. And so 58 thousand 921 dead people have been receiving pensions every month from the impoverished budget of 2008, 2009, 2010. Vazgen Khachikyan, who has headed the system of distribution of pensions and family benefits for long years, is waiting for June, when his fate will be decided. The power will decide in this period whether to sue Vazgen Khachikyan or not. In answer to reporters’ question whether Khachiikyan will have to bear criminal responsibility, Chairman of the Control Chamber Ishkhan Zakaryan said that Serge Sargsyan instructed to check the whole system until June and then, after having a full image, it will be possible to say yes or no. And if till now the Armenian society thought that the dead souls resurrect only on the election day to forge the bright future and “democratization” of the Republic of Armenia then quite recently we found out that these dead souls have been receiving pensions as well. And as the dead souls elect exceptionally the representatives of government then we can understand that they have also received election bribes in the form of pensions. The difference is that the hardly surviving citizens receive election bribes from election to election then the dead pensioners receive bribes every month. Besides that if the living voters received bribes from shady funds of the candidates then the dead souls received their pensions directly from the budget. And for years the complainers of the rigged elections of Armenia were saying that tens of thousands dead souls participate in elections. Therefore, we can say that the dead souls have become a very expensive value for our budget due to the efforts of Vazgen Khachikyan. Let us only remember that there are 500 thousand pensioners in Armenia. And the abovementioned 59 thousand dead souls make 12% of the total number of pensioners, which is a significant number in any economic calculation. Chairman of the Control Chamber Ishkhan Zakaryan presented the abuses that the Chamber revealed in 14 of 51 Social Security service regional divisions (Yerevan, Vanadzor and Gyumri) as a result of inspections. It is about the service headed by Vazgen Khachikyan. Ishkhan Zakaryan presented the types of breaches: dead people were paid deponent pensions and pensions, dead veterans of war were rewarded. Ishkhan Zakaryan presented other types of breaches too. He noted that after June, they will be able to present a general image of abuses, since Serge Sargsyan, getting acquainted with the situation, instructed the Chamber to check all the departments. And this makes only 8-15% of the overall cases. During the past three years the Audit Chamber inspected 843 cases. In the case of 581 various violations have been revealed. Zakaryan didn’t highlight how much the total amount of abuses was. It is still being calculated. Besides receiving the dead souls have been receiving their pensions in deponent. It means when the person is absent from the country his pension is accumulated but when that person returns and writes a request to the social fund they return the pension but for the past three years only. In this case it is clear that the deponent souls were not in the country and when they got resurrected they decided to receive their pensions. According to Zakaryan during the last three years 14 thousand 287 dead souls people received pensions. But for the sake of sincerity let’s mention that not all the people from this number were dead. A part of them have received their pensions every month. But it wasn;t a problem for the social fund to accumulate deponent pensions and output funds from the state budget every month. For example, a citizen, Ashot Mkhoyan was jointly paid a 6-month pension in October 2008. Three months after the payment was made another payment was made. And these cases go on like this and make about 69 thousand cases. And every single of these cases is a whole story to tell. Yesterday Zakaryan didn’t specify how much money was pocketed from the budget every year. He said that the audit still continues and that the results of the examination of the social fund are not yet approved at the Chamber’s session. A more accurate calculation can be expected in several months. But prior to that, in order to understand the amount of the abuse and the pocketed funds let us mention the budget 2011 allocates 197 billion AMD to pensioners. If we take into account the fact that 12% of pensioners are dead souls then we can say that 20 billion AMD or 55 million USD was annually sent to the “other world.” And this continued for years. That is the reason why after these inspections Vazgen Khachikyan had a heart attack. And we can only guess what other officials had shares from this money. Indeed the number of these officials is not only limited with Khachikyan. It is interesting to find out what other names will be revealed the Audit Chamber. Khachikyan was fired only several months ago but they don’t rush to make him responsible for his deeds. It is hard to say who else Khachikyan will drag into the hole. Let us only add that the cases of abuse and violations in the social fund were not merely limited by dead souls. After the dissolution of the payment department of this fund the former employees were complaining in front of the government building by claiming that they kept 200 drams from each pensioner every month and passed this money “above.” A while ago we calculated that this minor amount makes 70-80 million AMD every month. Are they planning to launch a criminal case based on these cases of abuse? “We send to the prosecutor-general only the cases, which are approved of at the Audit Chamber sessions. Today we cannot make this decision because of a simple reason. Indeed we also see criminal violations here but till June we have time to find out what actually happened in this sector,” said Zakaryan.
