Yesterday President Robert Kocharyan held a consultation with Armenia’s tax and customs authorities, saying they have failed to combat tax evasion, corruption within their ranks and privileged treatment enjoyed by some businessmen. Kocharyan voiced the strongly worded criticism at a meeting attended by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisyan, the heads of the State Tax Service (STS) and the State Customs Committee (SCC) as well as senior law-enforcement officials. “Robert Kocharyan expressed concern about the existing unsatisfactory tax administration, lack of a proper oversight, flawed legal framework and instances of favoritism on the part of officials,” the presidential press service said in a statement. The statement said Kocharyan cited concrete cases of unspecified entrepreneurs operating in “privileged conditions” and instructed law-enforcement bodies to “identify and strictly punish tax and customs officials engaged in favoritism.” It gave no details of those cases, though. Kocharyan was only cited as telling the STS and the CSS to pay particular attention to the payment of taxes by “companies providing goods and services at the expense of the state budget.” Bribery and other corrupt practices within the STS and the SCC also remains a serious problem. Kocharyan, himself accused by his opponents of sponsoring some government-connected tycoons, has regularly faulted the two agencies for failing to address it in earnest. His latest verbal attack came just two months after he appointed the chief of his oversight service, Vahram Barseghyan, as the new head of the STS. It would be more interesting if the office of the President informed which tycoon the President has spoken about.
