Officials of the State Property Management Department Sold State Property at Significantly Lower Prices

According to official information from the Prosecutor General's Office of Armenia, officials of the State Property Management Department, violating the requirements of Article 9, Part 2 of the Armenian Law on "Real Estate Appraisal Activities," offered to a private company to conduct appraisals of properties without legal grounds and without signing a contract.

Based on these offers, on December 1, 2016, the private company conducted an appraisal of a basement located at 22 N. Zaryan Street, No. 16 in the Arabkir community, with an area of 101.07 square meters, as well as a separate area of 115.5 square meters located at No. 19 in the 16th district of the Ajapnyak community. As a result, the first property was appraised at 4.8 million AMD, while the latter was appraised at 7.8 million AMD.

Based on these appraisals, the first property was sold through a competitive process for 3.6 million AMD, and the second for 5.6 million AMD.

Subsequently, an analysis of the market values of the aforementioned properties as of 2016 revealed that the market value of one of the sold properties could have been 10 million AMD, or nearly twice the initial appraised value, while the value of the other was estimated at 18 million AMD, or about 2.5 times the initial appraisal value.

According to the Prosecutor General's Office of Armenia, it was also found that the appraisal process for the properties by the private company violated appraisal standards, particularly by failing to consider their intended use and area. The recorded facts indicate that the officials responsible for the State Property Management Department of Armenia, abusing their official position to the detriment of service interests, violated the requirements of Armenian law on "Real Estate Appraisal Activities" by offering the private company to evaluate the state-owned properties without legal grounds and a signed contract, resulting in the company's specialist, in violation of appraisal standards and without considering the intended purpose and area of the assessed properties, creating a false conclusion that reduced their actual values by 2 or 2.5 times.

As a result, the relevant officials used these appraisals as the basis for the sale of the aforementioned properties, selling them for nearly three times less than their probable market value, causing significant damage to the state.

As a result of investigations conducted by the State Property Management Committee of Armenia and the Public Interests Protection Division of the Prosecutor General's Office, two criminal cases have been initiated under Part 1 of Article 308 of the Criminal Code of Armenia, with the preliminary investigation assigned to the Investigative Committee of Armenia.