The most important information broadcasted by the national TV company last week was about the auction of car “GOLD” plate numbers. The air of the TV company, which is financed by us, the taxpayers, was busy with broadcasting that nonsense event. You could hear the sound of the hammer, people were increasing the offers, in a word it was a poor show.
The highest price that was paid for the most expensive plate number (I don’t remember the number, it is not so important) was AMD1.650.000. It means that someone paid such a huge sum just for the beauty of his/her car.
As far as I know the tradition of furnishing cars with good numbers and names comes from the United States.
People do such things for the purpose of some interests and hobbies, competing with other people, to attract the attention of guys/girls or just to seem tough. People spend huge sums for such purposes there too. However, no TV company shows such auctions there and even if they do it for at least one minute, they will not introduce that event as a source of budget inflow and fighting against corruption.
GOLD plate numbers don’t attract only young people in our country. I have written about the understanding of “the document allowing to make violations” (Narushilovka), which is a document allowing law enforcement officers make violations for official purposes. It is worth mentioning that in our country this document can be obtained in by such people, who don’t have any connection with official (investigation) services.
GOLD plate numbers are a type of such understandings too. The cars with such identification plate numbers may not obey the instructions of the traffic police, they may park wherever and as they like. If in the past people spoke about black caviar and expensive dishes when describing how luxury wedding parties were, now they speak about the GOLD plate numbers of the cars participating in the party.
Before seeing the auction I didn’t pay any attention to the ambition of people to spend money on getting plate numbers with matching figures. I didn’t understand those people, who mobilized their relatives and contacts to meet with the high rank police officials to pay less for plate numbers for their new cars. However, when you see that someone is ready to pay AMD1.650.000 for plate number on the air of the national TV, you understand that not only the society’s level is falling, but as well as the economy.
No, please don’t expect that the mentioned person who paid that sum could just get simple plate numbers and pay that AMD1.650.000 to help the needy families introduced in almost all the reports of journalist of “168 Hours” newspaper Lusine Stepanyan.
However, that person, who definitely did not steal that money but earned himself (usually they say that they have earned), could invest that money in his business to increase the circulation of his assets instead of spending money on such nonsense and funny things. He could also pay taxes from that amount, but the country is isolated, the market is narrow, and there is no sense to produce a couple of more items. There is no place to sell, and thus if there is no place to sell they are looking for other places to spend their money.
Besides that, if they invest that money, the taxation bodies will come and take prepayment, they will send supervisors, who will write a ticket by all means, thus this one is an easier way how to spend money. By paying money to the state budget you can get GOLD plate numbers and win the privilege of keeping your small business undiscovered and being ignored by the traffic police. It is like a shampoo advertisement – two in one.