Last year, “168 Hours” touched upon the activities of Azeri Parviz Nosrat Alamdari, who is a citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran currently in Armenia. He is working in Armenia and has been state registered since 1996. So, he has been in Armenia for the past ten years and has been doing different things-he owns the “Shahab” or “New Shahab” chain of chemical cleaning outlets and has imported products. The Azeri businessman’s most profitable business has been the export of tubes which he began in 2000. According to the information of the Armenian state customs committee, last year P. Alamdari exported more than 10,000 tons of metal tubes to Iran.
In 2004, the Iranian “Shahab Tejarat Aras Commercial Co” company paid 334,667,860 AMD for 4621.21 tons of metal tubes from the “Armenian Water-Supply” company. This company also belongs to Mr. Alamdari, or perhaps he’s just the representative. Out of the sales, Mr. Alamdari paid 195,695,132 AMD and had a 138,972,728 AMD (more than 340,000 dollars) debt. On February 4, 2005, general director of “ArmWaterSupply” company Patrick Loreni and representative of the “Shahab Tejarat Aras Commercial Co” company P. Nosrati set a schedule for payment from March 14 to August 14. Over a year has a passed since that date and Nosrati has only paid less than 1 million AMD. According to our sources, he isn’t even getting ready to pay the rest. He even declared that he “doesn’t’ have a debt and has already paid whoever he had to pay”. I tried to find out why Nosrati wasn’t paying his debts, but my phone calls and letters remained unanswered.
“ArmWaterSupply” company is a state-run company, but currently it’s under the control of a French private organization. The company is also controlled by the Territorial Management Ministry’s water economy state committee. It would be wrong to say that the Armenian and French governments are following up on Nosrati’s debts. But they have filed complaints to different court instances. For example, Minister of Finances of Armenia Vartan Khachatryan was asked to “give the state property right”. The thing is that the defendant must pay two percent of the amount being negotiated. In this case, that two percent makes up 2,700,000 AMD. Khachatryan allowed, but the Iranian company didn’t sue “ArmWaterSupply” after that. An “ArmWaterSupply” correspondent told us that they don’t sue just because the person that owes them is registered in Iran and Armenia doesn’t have any interstate aid contract with Iran. So, the Armenian court can’t force an Iranian-registered company to pay debts, or keep its property under control and the taxation services of Armenia can’t confiscate property of any company. The Azeri businessman knows all that and refuses to pay the debt. Of course, this is a rather simple explanation because the court could have gotten that money back if it had the desire, especially since Alamdari has registered companies and properties in Armenia. Let’s recall “New Shehab”, which currently functions and is opening new branches. Perhaps “we Armenians” don’t want to “get” the money from the Azeri businessman and his sponsors. As a reminder, the “ArmWaterSupply” is involved in supplying water to the people of Armenia and circulation and spends most of the money given as loans. Any Armenian knows that there is not a lot of water supply in the villages of Armenia and the company could have solved water problems in some villages with the 340,000 dollar debt. Instead of doing that, the Armenian authorities are holding “Armenia-Diaspora” conferences in order to ask Armenians from abroad to provide money for “developing the village communities.”