Police Reveal Case of Over 34 Million Drams in Damage to the State

The main department of the Criminal Police's fight against corruption and economic crimes has uncovered another instance of corrupt behavior. This has been reported by the Armenian Police.

Specifically, it has been discovered that, based on a government decision from April 23, 2003, a building and property valued at 180,000,000 drams were sold to a pre-identified buyer for 22,500,000 drams by the State Property Management Office of the "Ajapnyak" universal store. Additionally, a decision was made by the Yerevan mayor in 2003 to establish the boundaries of the land occupied by the "Ajapnyak" universal store, owned by the same citizen, and to allocate additional land. Based on this decision, two lease agreements were signed between the city hall and the citizen in 2004 for land plots of 7,470 sqm and 3,880 sqm.

However, during the preparation of materials, it was revealed that prior to signing these lease agreements, the government had established new zoning and cadastral values on December 24, 2003, which led to an increase in the cadastral value of the citizen's leased land totaling 11,350 sqm from 16,623,437 drams to 51,347,400 drams.

In such circumstances, with a preliminary intent to appropriate state property, the citizen falsified the dates on the two lease agreements signed in 2004 and presented already falsified leases allegedly signed in 2003 to the first instance court of the Kentron and Norq Marash communities in Yerevan during 2004. Based on these, the court ruled to carry out the expropriation process in favor of the citizen at the previous cadastral value.

As a result, the citizen, taking advantage of the negligent attitude and inaction of former officials of the Yerevan city hall towards their duties, fraudulently appropriated the land plot with an overall cadastral value of 51,347,000 drams by paying only 16,623,430 drams, causing significant damage to the state amounting to 34,723,560 drams.

A criminal case has been initiated on this matter, which has been forwarded to the investigative committee for further investigation.