RA general prosecutor’s office has given its conclusions

09/08/2006 Rafael TEYMURAZYAN

Based on the conclusions, two drafts of the statement of the NA Control Department (NACD) had to be sent to the public prosecutor’s office, one of which concerned the audit findings in 2003, and the second one concerned the privatizations done by the government in the period of 2001-2003. The mentioned statement contains information and conclusions concerning the letter sent by NA former speaker Arthur Baghdasaryan as of May 16. A. Baghdasaryan had resigned before May 16, but continued his work till the end of May. Anyhow, the conclusions of the public prosecutor’s office write about four statements and conclusions on registered violations. The parliament criticized the findings of the NACD. Now it turns out that the public prosecutor’s office has not found violations in any of those four statements prepared by the NACD. On August 4, deputy RA general prosecutor, Gevorg Danielyan said that they hadn’t found facts that could be a subject to criminal proceedings. He said that there had been violations and they had been informed about them long before the NACD made its statements, but noted that the prosecutor’s office did not have any legalities to accuse anyone of those violations. The NACD wrote about cases when companies were sold cheaper than the real market price. The public prosecutor’s office brings up economical rules and says that in some cases the government may reduce the prices of companies to be sold instead of economical future obligations and other corresponding responsibilities taken by the future owners of those companies. As for the conclusions, on the basis of its information it seems that either those facts are not violations or are just small shortcomings. For instance, the statement of the NACD writes that the mayor of Yerevan has made a decision to sell a governmental property that was not included in the list of properties to be privatized. As for the fact that conclusions of the prosecutor’s office state that on the basis of a recommendation to the mayor of Yerevan, proposed by the transportation department of the municipality the mayor made a decision to privatize that state property and organize an auction according to the law. “In other words, the mentioned property was not privatized by the mayor directly, but that recommendation was proposed by that company, and the mayor just made a decision to allow them to privatize, which doesn’t contradict that RA law and is provided by the law on joint stock companies”, writes the statement of the public prosecutor’s office. As for another finding, according to which properties in the list of companies to be privatized were privatized too (for instance, “Saphir” CJSC); prosecutors say that it would be illegal if only the separated properties were subject to privatization by other means than defined beforehand. The statement of the public prosecutor’s office writes that the situation in the case above is quite different. According to them, the mentioned company made a decision in 2001 to separate that property from the company and, furthermore, made another decision on how to give that property and to whom to give it (they made a decision to give that property to the governmental department of state property management, after which the legal status of that property changed and it became the property of the executive power). Accordingly, in this case the mentioned property could not be privatized according to the law on privatizing state properties as it was under the control of the executive power.

Generally, on the basis of the conclusions of the RA general prosecutor’s office it seems that they haven’t been looking for violations, but have been trying to cover them.