The representatives of the “Royal Armenia” company had organized a press conference yesterday at the “Marriot” hotel. Lawyers Gevorg Minasyan and Ashot Sargsyan were demanding the release of the president and share-holder of the company Gagik Hakobyan and vice-director Aram Ghazaryan, who had been arrested on October 11. The announcement made by owner of the “Royal Armenia” Inc. Tony El Labaki, foreign share-holder L. Akhulas Gonzalez and the company’s lawyer Gevorg Minasyan was out in the open. According to that announcement, the arrest had taken place based on Vache Petrosyan’s defamation and the customs committee’s fake registration. There was also a complaint addressed to president Robert Kocharyan and other officials, which proves that there was no reason to arrest the company’s co-presidents and they ask for their release.
Let’s simply recall how this all started. “Royal Armenia” has been importing coffee to Armenia since 1996. This is a company that has tried to do business legally. Particularly, as stated in the announcement made by the administration, they had rejected the offer made by the State Customs Committee for constituting a small value on the price of coffee, pay a lower customs tax and then share the difference. As a result, we have the Royal Armenia-State Customs Committee (SCC) conflict which continues to unfold. Gagik Hakobyan and Aram Ghazaryan are being accused of falsifying “Federal Invest Group’s” (FIG) 18 invoices. The “Federal Invest Group” has been the former supplier. Experimental investigators have come to the conclusion that the circular stamps of FIG’s invoices given to the SCC do not correspond with the circular, Vietnamese stamps seen on the invoices sent to Royal Armenia by the Federal Investment Group. Royal Armenia has then sent those invoices to the SCC. This means that Royal Armenia has falsified the stamps. The company representatives have considered this conclusion senseless and have stated that FIG could have presented some other stamp (the company is not forbidden to have alternative circular stamps). Besides that, there is no logic there because any falsification is done to evade paying taxes, however, Royal Armenia did not face those kinds of problems. Royal Armenia is a foreign joint venture and according to the “law about foreign investments” stated in Armenian legislation, the company has been freed from paying customs taxes until May, 1, 2005. According to the “law about profit taxes” in Armenian legislation, the company has been free from paying taxes in the years of 2002-2003 and 50% in 2004.
The co-presidents of the company G. Hakobyan and A. Ghazaryan are also being blamed in violations. They have been arrested and sentenced to jail based on Vache Petrosyan’s application sent to FIG. According to that application, Vache Petrosyan claims that G. Hakobyan owes him money and refuses to pay back his debt. The company’s lawyer did not qualify V. Petrosyan’s accusations and stated that based on their data, Petrosyan has not proved anything.
This whole conflict started when G. Hakobyan and V. Petrosyan decided to build a coffee reprocessing factory and each invested 300 thousand dollars. Just when they were about to make the factory work, they decided to sell the ready-made factory. However, in order to evade any problems, they agreed to pretend selling a 50% share-holding belonging to G. Hakobyan and his brother to Vache Petrosyan. Petrosyan, claiming that he can not prove how the 300 thousand dollars came up, suggested make the transaction at a price lower than the nominal value-119.817 dollars. He promised to return all the money to G. Hakobyan and also pay half the remaining money left after alienating the factory. Only 152,804 dollars has been paid since 2002. Later, V. Petrosyan has refused selling the factory and has not paid the rest of the money. In any case, according to the company representatives, G. Hakobyan is not the one that owes money to V. Petrosyan, but rather, vice versa. The amount of the debt, based on calculations, is 347 thousand dollars. What made G. Hakobyan so sure that V. Petrosyan would fulfill his promise? He was sure based on the fact that in 2001, G. Hakobyan opened an account at the BANQUE SBA bank in Cypress upon Petrosyan’s request. Petrosyan had accumulated money in the bank. There had been 400 thousand dollars in the account and since G. Hakobyan has not given any certificate for taking care of the expenses because he was certain that he is insured with the money in the account. “Vache Petrosyan has illegally owned that money. He simply had 400,000 dollars. Basically, this is a case of money-laundering. We must mention the fact that FIG and Royal Armenia have been collaborating since 1999. The quality of coffee produced by the two companies has been low throughout the years of 2003-2004 and Royal Armenia stopped collaborating in 2004. This was what caused the conflict.
In response to the question as to which is the best solution to this problem, Mr. Minasyan said that “although some people are the ones held responsible, however, all in all, we are businessmen and we don’t care that much about the corrupted system in the State Customs Committee. All we want is for them to let us work according to the laws in this country.”
In any case, everything will be decided by the second instance court. If the decision is made fairly, then everything will be fine. But if it goes on “according to the request”, the company representatives promise to hold another press conference and bring up new arguments.