Gagik Beglaryan Changes Color of Range Rover and Sells to Ministry at High Market Price

The newspaper 'Haykakan Zhamanak' has received information that former Minister of Transport and Communication Gagik Beglaryan changed the color of his used Range Rover in 2013 and sold it to the ministry at a high market price of $30,000.

We attempted to confirm this information with the Ministry of High Technology Industry, which is essentially a successor to the Ministry of Transport and Communication. In response to our written inquiry about whether there is a Range Rover on the balance sheet of the Ministry of High Technology Industry whose factory color has been changed, they replied, 'There is a Range Rover on the balance sheet of the Ministry of High Technology Industry that has been submitted to the State Property Management Committee for disposal. The ministry has no information regarding the factory color of the vehicle; at the time of acquisition, it was black.'

It was also confirmed that the vehicle was purchased from an individual for 15 million drams. However, whether it had been used or not is information the ministry does not possess. We learned from the ministry’s response to our inquiry that the vehicle was manufactured in 2005 and acquired in 2013.

We asked the chairman of the State Property Management Committee, Narek Babayan, on what basis the Range Rover, purchased in 2013, was submitted for disposal. Babayan stated that it is not suitable for use, which is why it has been submitted for disposal. According to him, the committee is preparing to auction it and is awaiting a government decision.

We found that, according to the government decision number 1355-N dated December 5, 2013, the government allocated 15 million drams from the reserve fund to the Ministry of Transport and Communication for the acquisition of a vehicle, among other agencies. In accordance with clause 2 of part 5 of Article 20 of the RA Law on Procurement, the vehicle was purchased through a negotiated procedure without prior public announcement of the procurement.

According to the 2013 report of the Ministry of Transport and Communication, the off-road vehicle was acquired to monitor roads under complex climatic conditions.

The Executive Director of the National Center for Public Policy Research, Armenuhi Burnazyan, told us in our conversation that the law does not prohibit a state body from acquiring used property. However, according to her, both under the previous and current procurement law, the purchase must be efficient. 'Whether it’s property or other goods, the product must be the right one in terms of price and quality, meaning it should be acquired in a way that it has a certain service life. According to the government decision regarding the purchase you mentioned, the service life is stated to be 8.5 years. If it has been used, I don’t know how it meets that requirement, because usually new property is chosen to serve for a longer period of time.' It should be noted that 8.5 years have not passed since 2013.

Regarding the acquisition from an individual, Burnazyan stated that purchases exceeding 1 million drams must be made through competitive means. 'However, the fact that it was purchased from the reserve fund has allowed for a non-competitive method to be applied. Since different agencies were allocated funds, I assume that the reserve fund was intended for a specific purpose—in this case, for the purchase of vehicles,' Burnazyan said.

According to her, another question is how the person from whom the vehicle was purchased was chosen. We learn from the government website that the vehicle was acquired from Hakob Stepanyan. 'The law has a specific provision that members of the commission evaluating the purchased goods should not be connected to the seller. You cannot buy a vehicle from your brother or friend if you are involved in the procurement process. Who is the seller in this case, and have they been connected to the buyer—this needs to be clarified in another way,' she noted.

We were unable to determine who Hakob Stepanyan is and it is possible that he acted under the scheme often used by officials—registering their property under friends and relatives. In any case, the vehicle was not mentioned in Beglaryan's disclosures, meaning everything was executed 'cleanly' in terms of documentation.