Armenia reveals high-profile embezzlement cases

Head of the Armenian State Supervision Service Romanos Petrosyan has promised to talk about high-profile embezzlement cases in several state organizations within two weeks.

“We have numerous files which will be made public. Our State Supervision Service not only detects abuses and waste of public funds, but prevents them,” Petrosyan said, Caliber.Az reports with reference to the Armenian media.

Petrosyan stressed that the Armenian State Supervision Service controls over 50 state organizations, adding that abuses have been revealed in some organizations, including the Yerevan City Hall.

The head of the Armenian State Supervision Service promised to disclose these cases in late May.

“However, the corresponding appeals on some cases have already been sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office,” Petrosyan said.

“About 30 appeals have been sent to various law enforcement agencies since early 2022. The appeals were mainly related to the abuse committed in the past,” Petrosyan said.

The head of the State Control Service said that the abuse cases were also revealed in the local self-government agencies.

“A discriminatory approach to participating companies was observed during tenders announced in various communities. The heads of communities often buy SUVs, the documents have been formalized well, but it turns out that SUVs were bought from an affiliated person,” Petrosyan said.

The head of the State Control Service said that such abuse cases were revealed in more than ten communities.

Petrosyan did not disclose the name of the company, but said that in one case it was possible to prevent a purchase worth more than $60,000.

“These cases are the result of shortcomings in the legislation. For example, if the technical standards for the cars of state officials are specified by law, then the law does not impose restrictions for the heads of local self-government agencies, which results in abuse. We have already addressed the prime minister and the minister of finance with a proposal to change the law,” Petrosyan said.

The head of the State Control Service added that three inspections are currently being carried out at the Ministry of Defence and the abuse cases are not ruled out.

Petrosyan stressed that embezzlement of tens of billions of drams was prevented thanks to the work of the State Control Service. Moreover, the bigger the budget funds are, the bigger the abuse is.