I have made such an assumption based on the recent crimes in several banks of Yerevan. On July 1-3, there was a robbery in “Ardshininvestbank”’s Malatia-Sebastia community located in the building of the local government of the mentioned community. The most amazing thing is that no one knows exactly when the robbery took place. It was probably committed on July 1-3, because the bank didn’t work on the weekend and citizens saw that money was stolen from their bank on Monday. According to our information, $600,000 USD was stolen from the bankk. It is not clear yet how the robbers entered the building and escaped from the guards. I paid a visit to the bank where there was a big crowd of people and the bank was working normally. It seemed as if nothing had happened. I asked a representative of the bank to give me some details, but the only thing he told me was the fact that there were no victims. There were policemen near the bank too, who were questioning some people. I tried to get information from the security officer of the bank, but he didn’t say anything and pointed to the door of the manager, but the latter was missing. The door of the bank was a thin wooden door and I suppose that it was not so difficult for the robbers to enter the building. The board of the Central Bank has made a decision, which defines some norms concerning the allocation of banks and their security measures. According to this norm, banks giving money in cash must have a separate cell for keeping money separate from the main hall. This cell must not have any windows and must have a metallic door. Banks must have security alarm facilities and fire protection installations, which are to be supplied by several sources of energy, one of which can be local. Do banks follow all these security measures? The police and other corresponding bodies should think about this.
We asked a client of the bank whether she had been informed about the incident. She told us that she was very surprised to find out about that. Many years ago citizens were afraid to keep their money in banks and thought that bankers would not return their money. People have started to trust banks thorughout the past couple of years. But now new crimes have come up, which tend to create mistrust among citizens again. The first bank robbery was committed in 2005, when some criminals stole 36 million AMD from Anelik bank on Baghramyan street. After that incident the press wrote that, according to the president of Anelik bank, there were no damages on the walls or cells of the bank after the robbery; the only thing that the criminals had done was open the door of the currency exchange room, open the safe box and steal the money from there. Other crimes followed this; a person even died during one of those crimes.
According to the information of the public prosecutor’s office of Yerevan, recently ACBA bank checked up on the activities inside the bank on the basis of the order of the president of the mentioned bank and found out that in 2006, cashier L. Martirosyan had stolen over 18 million AMD and 38.000 USD from the bank.
Furthermore, several months ago a citizen left jewelry in a bank and took $800k USD instead, but later it turned out that the jewelry was fake. Later the jewelry disappeared from the bank and the mentioned citizen was rejected to be given that money. According to our information, this incident happened in the Malatsya community branch of “Unibank”. Taking into account the fact that there are often rumors spread to hurt the reputation of banks on purpose, I asked head of “Unibank” board, Vardan Atayan. “It is not true. Some people tried to play a trick, but it was prevented”, said the banker. He was also surprised to hear the large sum I mentioned ($800k USD) and said that their bank didn’t give more than 1.000 USD for jewelry deposits.
I just hope that there will be no more robberies and crimes connected with the banking system in Armenia because the Armenian banking system is just developing and these kinds of crimes may make the citizens distrust the banks. The CB and the public prosecutor’s office have to adopt new mechanisms to prevent such cases and fight against them.