Everyone swindles

06/07/2009

On July 1 the Supervisory Palace (SP) published facts on state income and expenditure collection violations in several sectors in 2007-2008. As a result of the previous publications of this institution we learnt that different state institutions such as ministries, governors’ offices and other departments had embezzled the money they had received from the budget to pay for different needs, and this time it turns out that either as a result of negligence or on purpose a lot of money has not been paid to the state budget. In particular, as a result of supervising the activities of the state committee on regulating Public services (CRPC) it turned out that in 2007-2008 this institution failed to pay 444,240k dram to the state budget. The CRPC had to charge this money from the resources received from the provision of private radio connections to private companies and it failed to do so. They failed to charge this money from hundreds of private and several state companies, most of which are known as profitable and in some cases super-profitable businesses. The mentioned companies received different radio wave frequencies from the CRPC to use for radio, TV broadcast and providing internet services but did not pay for the services. The mentioned institution failed to charge the compulsory payments and fees of license as well. This money is not so much for one company, but all the companies taken together have not paid a lot of money to the budget. In a word, it is an established fact that a number of companies have not paid the money to the budget and the mentioned institution ignored this fact. We have found out that during the past two years companies such as the Copper-molybdenum company of Zangezur, the Electric Networks of Armenia, Armrusgazard, Armenia International Airports, Armavia, Grand Holding, Grant Tobacco and Hrazdan sports complex failed to pay the mentioned fees to the budget. For example, the two companies above that belong to businessman Hrant Vardanyan failed to pay 406 thousand dram to the budget. The Copper-molybdenum company of Zangezur failed to pay 360k dram, the Electric Network of Armenia – 860k dram, etc. This money is not significant for the mentioned big companies even in the conditions of crisis. Political parties owe money to the budget for using radio frequencies as well and such parties are the RPA (202k dram) and ARF (200k dram). Even the Embassy of Iran in Armenia owes to the state for the mentioned service. The municipality of Gyumri has not paid 202k dram to the budget. The Gold Mining Company of Ararat owes 13,152k dram to the state, and the Armenian Railway – 7,444k dram. Astafyan, Valencia, Latar and Metropol companies have debts too. A number of taxi services, which belong either to high rank officials or their undiscovered agents have failed to pay the fees for radio wave frequencies as well. Areximbank and Conversebank failed to pay 200k drams for satellite connection, and Armrusgazard failed to pay 8 million dram. Armrusgazard and other high-profitable companies have debts for different types of connection services simultaneously. Cornet-AM, Armaeronavigation, the Atomic station and a number of other companies have debts for different types of services simultaneously. The CRPC had the right to stop providing the services to such companies but failed to do so. Even it provided such services to companies which did not pay the fees in the last year either. It is not important why the mentioned institution failed to charge the money, the important thing is that the money has not been paid to the budget. Most of the companies failing to pay the mentioned money are profitable businesses. It is not excluded that in some cases it might be a result of corruption as well. There is a tiny detail too: the CRPC allowed 17 companies not to pay 50mln drams to the budget and annulated their debts. The engineering center of Armrusgazard company and the Public TV are among the mentioned companies (6,5 million and 118,000 correspondingly). As a result of supervision on part of the SC the half of the mentioned money has been paid to the budget (225 million). By the way, the mentioned institution checked up the activities of the past two years and it is not clear how much they failed to pay before it too.