Corruption Violations in Land Processes at Arabkir Park

It has been revealed that the city mayor of Yerevan, through three decisions made in May and November 2003, as well as July 2004, violated Article 60 of the RA Land Code and the requirements of the RA law on the status of illegally constructed buildings and occupied land plots. This led to the recognition of property rights of three citizens over a café, its storage room, a kiosk, and a photo studio located within the state property and listed land restriction areas in Arabkir Park.

Additionally, it was found that after a June 2011 inspection recorded illegal land appropriation by a citizen, instead of initiating administrative proceedings to halt the further appropriation, responsible officials at the City Hall extended the lease agreements for the land twice, in 2013 and 2017.

Moreover, on February 17, 2017, and May 4, 2018, the Yerevan Mayor made decisions based on conclusions from the city’s architecture and urban development department, granting land plots to two individuals for construction rights and signing a land lease agreement with a company. However, reviewing the general layout from those years revealed that numerous illegally constructed buildings on these plots were not recorded in the aforementioned conclusions.

Subsequently, despite the RA State Committee on Real Estate Cadastre suspending the registration process in June 2018 due to the presence of structures in the expanding land plot layout, relevant officials still proceeded with the state registration of rights for the real estate belonging to that company without the necessary land layout.

Furthermore, documents indicated that after discovering illegal land appropriation in March and April 2018 in the Arabkir Park area and imposing administrative fines on the perpetrators, responsible officials failed to take measures to stop the violation, meaning repeated administrative penalties were not imposed on the offenders, and the appropriation was not rectified.

This shows that officials at the City Hall have misused their positions against the interests of their duties, recognizing citizens' property rights over specific structures in violation of legislative requirements and not rectifying the situations despite recorded illegal appropriations, thus allowing the use of the appropriated parcels through indirect decisions.

In certain cases, officials from the City Hall and the RA State Committee on Real Estate Cadastre provided clearly false information in official documents and misused their powers, ultimately violating legal requirements by unlawfully granting land to legal entities and processing state registration for the property. These actions caused significant harm to the legitimate interests of society and the state.

Based on the above, the Yerevan Prosecutor’s Office has initiated a criminal case under Article 308, Part 1, Article 314, Part 1, and Article 315, Part 1 of the RA Criminal Code, which has been forwarded to the investigative department of the RA Investigative Committee in Yerevan for further investigation.