The Geopromining Gold company that explores and uses the gold mines of Sodk and Meghradzor has done a lot of legal violations. We were informed about these violations yesterday by the chairman of the RA controller commission Ishkhan Zakaryan.
The Geopromining Gold LLC exploited the mines in legal violations of contracts too incurring losses of millions of dollars to the state. “The license Agreements 368 and 369 dated February 29 for the purpose of exploiting the mines of Meghradzor in Kotayk region were executed in violation of the law which regulates this sector. The excavation of the mines of Sodk and Meghradzor by the Geopromining company since July 1 2004 till February 29 2008 has been done without enforced licenses, which in fact is an illegal activity,” said Ishkhan Zakaryan. He also said that they had not examined the financial situation of that company and have only analyzed the contracts between this company and the ministry of environmental protection and the responsibilities therein. According to the agreement, the company had to excavate 600 mine stones from the mine of Sodk, but during the past three years it has excavated 366,445 tons. Besides that, for extracting these two mines the company collected 24 million 160 thousand drams concession debt. Even in case of extracting more than 366 thousands tons this company reported to the state incomes committee that it works with losses. During this period every week there have been reports about the growth of the prices of gold. According to the information published by the controller commission, since 2007 till 2010 the price of one gram of gold has grown from 21,12 to 40,88 dollars. According to experts’ information, there is more than 6 grams of gold in each ton of mine stone. During this period the mentioned company extracted mine stones containing 2 tons and 198 kilos of gold. According to rough calculations, this company extracted gold mine stones worth of 70 millions but reported that it worked with losses. According to the information provided by the head of the state incomes committee Gagik Khachatryan, the official reports show that in 2007, 2008 and 2009 the Geopromining Gold company had losses of 15,6bln, 17,2bln and 11,6bln accordingly. However, they have also found out that this company has failed to do its investment responsibilities. How and where did this company spend the incomes of 70 millions? Has not the government been interested in the reports of this company or did not they really see that this company was violating the law and embezzling if they were ready to make video reporting and show for every box of stolen cakes or wine? The mines are the property of the state of Armenia and the Geopromining Gold company was using this property. These are not the only violations this company has committed. The 100% of the stocks of this company are under pledge for 250 million dollars credit with the British branch of the VTB Bank, the VTB Capital PLC Bank in favor of some company named Carlo BV. This credit deal was made in June of this year but nothing has been invested in Armenia from this sum. The Carlo BV is a huge company, which involves the mines of Sodk and Meghradzor, as well as the copper-molybdenum company of Agarak too. This company also involves two Georgian and several Russian companies. All these companies are registered in offshore zones, mainly in the Caymon islands. If the Carlo BV does not pay the credit back, the bank will have the right to sell the companies included in it, including the Armenian branches.
The head of the controller commission has already submitted these materials and conclusions to the RA government to discuss whether the government should allow this company to continue the work in this mine or no. They have also raised the issue of punishing certain officials for this. We wonder if there are officials from the Armenian government among these people to be punished. Ishkhan Zakaryan has not sent these materials to the prosecutor’s office yet but he did not exclude the possibility that he would. He did not tell us any information about the real owners of these mines and whether there are Armenians among them. “Don’t take me to subjective discussions,” said Zakaryan and added that they are not that naïve to think that there are no people standing behind those mines. The licenses were given to the Geopromining Gold company on February 29 2008. At that time the president was Robert Kocharyan. It was a bad coincidence that this was done in the threshold of the tragic clashes of March 1. It is hard to imagine that such a “big” license could be given to anyone without interest during the tenure of Kocharyan. There have been other publications in the media writing that the copper-molybdenum company of Kajaran belongs to Kocharyan as well.