Free energy as electoral bribe

26/10/2005 Armine AVETYAN

The citizens of Noubarashen know that this house belongs to Vesmir Hovsepyan, who used to be the head of Noubarashen electric power station. Mr. Hovsepyan approved this information during his phone conversation with our correspondent. A territory of 3.000 meters and a 2-3 meter high wall surrounds the house. Citizens of Noubarashen say that this territory had to be cleaned and there had to be a bus-parking place there. MP of the NA Gevorg Hakobyan (His nick is Vlad of mixed feed) backed Vesmir Hovsepyan. Citizens of Noubarashen say that Vesmir has collected votes for MP Gevorg Hakobyan by giving free electricity to people as electoral bribe. The main transport route connecting Noubarashen community with Yerevan (#16 bus) ends near the newly built house of Vesmir Hovsepyan. All the citizens of this community know that this house belongs to Vesmir Hovsepyan. Citizens of Noubvarashen say that Vesmir Hovsepyan didn’t let anyone build anything in that territory.

“At first he purposely filled this territory with garbage. Then he ordered to clean the garbage to show that he was doing a good thing. Then he ordered to build a wall and started the construction works of the house”,-said one of his neighbors. At first V.Hovsepyan applied to the ex-head of the community Robert Asatryan and asked to let him privatize the territory, but Robert Asatryan told him that this was out of their competence”. Then Mr. Hovsepyan tried to make contact with the city administration and he did. MP of the NA Gevorg Hakobyan helped him with this. They started to look for ways for doing that. Mr. Hakobyan could help him due to his contacts, and Mr Hovsepyan could collect votes for Mr. Hakobyan by using his power. Citizens of Noubarashen say that this was a usual thing for them. They say that Mr. Hovsepyan collected votes for Mr. Gevorgyan by giving free energy to citizens as electoral bribe. By the way, Mr Hakobyan is the Godfather of Robert Asatryan’s son and he asked Mr. Asatryan not to take any actions regarding this. Citizens of Noubarashen say that the local police department in the name of the head of this department Seiran Manoukyan and investigation officer Eghia Karakhanyan backed them. But the legal problems remain unsolved till now. According to our information V.Hovsepyan doesn’t have any legal documents for this construction, he doesn’t have any documents defining that this house is his property either. He didn’t agree with all this information during our phone conversation. “As far as I know this territory belongs to eight or nine people. A part of this territory belongs to me (470 square meters). The other part belongs to my brother (670). I don’t know anything about the rest of the territory. I have documents for land property that I got from the city administration in 1990, but I haven’t privatized the house yet, because I don’t have enough money for that. I need about 4.000 USD to privatize the house”,- said Mr. Hovsepyan. Concerning how he made constructions there he said: “I started to construct this house about 4-5 years ago. I sold my flat to collect money for the construction and now my daughters help me from abroad”.

Citizens of Noubarashen say: “Don’t believe him, he is a liar, he built this house with stolen money. And Vlad helped him to do this as well.” An officer of Noubarashen community local government said, that the entire territory and the house belonged to Mr Hovsepyan, that he hadn’t made any payments before that and that he didn’t have any property documents either. The existing parking place for #16 route buses is very small. There is neither a lavatory nor a place for the drivers to park. They complain that they gather not far from the road, because their territory is too small for them, besides that it becomes very dirty in rainy weather. People say that Mr. Hovsepyan always liked to use an expression when he was the head of the electric power station and always said: “the world is under my foot”.