We Have Evidence: The Prosecutor's Office is Creating an Artificial Criminal Case at the Mayor's Request - "Sanitek"

According to a statement released by the Prosecutor's Office, due to apparent abuses by officials from the Yerevan City Hall and authorized persons from "Sanitek," the Yerevan community has suffered a loss of 5.3 billion AMD. We present our statement:

This was stated in the communication from the management of "Sanitek." "It is inappropriate to officially declare the 5.3 billion AMD loss echoed by the Prosecutor's Office under conditions where the total annual turnover of "Sanitek" contracts does not exceed even 5.2 billion AMD. The facts mentioned in the statement distort the entire reality and result from superficial analyses, and we believe they aim to justify the use of all state machinery to eliminate "Sanitek" as part of the Yerevan Mayor's program. The mayor is resorting to all possible methods to achieve his life’s goal, involving the entire media landscape, the Government of Armenia through the State Revenue Committee, the Prosecutor General's Office through the protection of public interests department, the office of the Human Rights Defender, and all other possible bodies.

We now wish to address each distorted fact in the statement as concisely and understandably as possible. The company denies any false information in documents proving professional experience, necessary technical means, financial resources, and manpower, as all submitted documents correspond to reality and can be verified within any procedural framework. Concerning the claim that the community suffered a loss of 1,607,721,900 AMD due to the failure of "Sanitek" to provide guarantees from a bank or credit organization, we note that "Sanitek" has fulfilled its contractual obligations in good faith, and by 2018 all necessary documents were available. Notably, the 1,607,721,900 AMD loss corresponds to the total amount for the equipment and garbage bins purchased by the Yerevan City Hall in 2019. At the time of signing the annual contract in 2019, Mayor Hayk Marutyan did not demand a guarantee from a bank or credit organization for that year. Therefore, even if it is established that this amount is a loss rather than an unjustified expense by the mayor, Hayk Marutyan is to blame for it.

Regarding the payment of 1.8 billion AMD for supplying and installing 16,000 units of 1100-liter garbage containers, collecting, removing, washing, and repairing them, we state that this is the product of the mayor's vivid imagination and a unique interpretation of the terms of the contract that suits him, as the essence of the contract dictates that waste collection operators must provide the specified number of bins throughout their operational period, regularly. According to the contract, operators were to provide the necessary number of containers at designated places specified by the City Hall, which totaled around 10,000 units, a number fully met by the operators. Moreover, operators were also obliged to provide new containers at their own expense in cases where new locations are designated or existing containers are damaged or worn, which, when combined with already installed ones, could not exceed 16,000 units throughout the contract's duration.

As for the claim regarding the payment for cleaning 4,000 platforms that do not exist, while only 459 have been built, we state that this information is evidently disinformation aimed at misleading the public and once again harming the reputation of "Sanitek." Everything is much simpler. There are around 4,000 locations for garbage bin placement in Yerevan, of which only 459 have constructed platforms (constructing platforms is the responsibility of the City Hall). If the City Hall has not constructed the mentioned platforms on time, it does not mean that there have not been locations for deploying garbage bins in the city. Therefore, "Sanitek" was paid not for cleaning non-existent platforms, as stated in the announcement, but rather for cleaning works at the 4,000 locations where garbage bins are actually being placed, of which only 459 have platforms built.

Regarding the mayor's belief that the bins should be metal, we inform that the equipment used during waste collection, as well as the bins, meet the EN840 standard provided in the technical specifications of the Contract.

We also wish to note that we possess numerous pieces of evidence regarding how the Prosecutor's Office is artificially creating a criminal case at the mayor's request. In the case of ongoing defamation, we will start publishing all the evidence we have on hand," the statement concludes.