Gagik Tsarukyan Has No Direct Relation to the Activities of Onira Club LLC: Clarification

In relation to the case involving the Shangri La casino, the management of Onira Club LLC has issued a clarification regarding the statement released yesterday by the National Security Service (NSS). They noted several considerations, which we present in full below:

"First, we want to emphasize that Gagik Tsarukyan has no direct connection to the activities of Onira Club LLC for the simple reason that the company has been entrusted to fiduciary management, and its management is carried out by top managers arriving from England and Russia. Instead of the legally required investment of 40 billion drams for the license issuance, Onira Club has made an investment of over 61 billion drams.

Regarding the information about two different casinos operating under the same license, we note that this is also untrue, as this case concerns two different halls of one casino, which are located in different buildings of a restaurant-hotel complex, share the same address, accounting, and staff, which have, by the way, been confirmed by the government through the presented investment project package.

We want to particularly highlight that throughout its operations, the complex has been under the scrutiny of the relevant authorities. During this period, extensive checks have been conducted by both the State Revenue Committee and the Ministry of Finance, including in the last two years. During all these checks, no violations or illegal activities have ever been found in Onira Club; otherwise, the company would certainly not have been granted an operational license.

This raises a question: if no violations have been found during annual tax audits, how could there be a “30 billion dram damage to the state” seemingly appearing out of thin air? Throughout this period, Onira Club has paid approximately 5.5 billion drams in taxes annually and is one of the largest taxpayers in Armenia.

In the current situation, the conclusion is clear: following Gagik Tsarukyan’s well-known speech, he has begun to be subjected to political persecution, and it has simply been decided to fabricate a case against our company. We also inform that the Onira Club restaurant-hotel complex employs 700 staff, who may, due to these illegal persecutions, become unemployed."

— Management of Onira Club LLC