No Such Information in Previously Published Data: Tunyan Refutes Hrant Bagratyan's Statements

The Chairman of the Economic Affairs Permanent Commission of the National Assembly of Armenia, Babken Tunyan, addressed the statements made by former Prime Minister Hrant Bagratyan during the opposition rally yesterday at the commission's regular session today.

“All these claims are false. The declarations of income for the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Prime Minister have not yet been published. There is no such information in previously published data. There was no $12 million bonus in the state system in 2020,” Tunyan stated.

It should be recalled that at the rally held in Sevan on April 6, Hrant Bagratyan announced that the income declarations for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and NA Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan for 2020 have been published, each amounting to $60,000. He also claimed that Pashinyan does not dare to raise the salaries of the Speaker of the National Assembly, deputies, or even his own, yet gives bonuses every month. According to him, $120 million was spent from the budget for bonuses in 2020. According to Bagratyan’s calculations, with that amount, the state could have purchased 2,000 small UAVs or 10 TOR systems.

Babken Tunyan described Bagratyan’s calculations as a “dangerous manipulation,” adding that in this way, one could argue that any other state expenditure could have been allocated to different purposes.