Vanadzor Mayor in the Spotlight: Court of Auditors' Findings

The newspaper "Zhoghovurd" reports: "One of the undesirable municipalities for the authorities, the Vanadzor City Hall, has come under the scrutiny of the RA Court of Auditors. "Zhoghovurd" has learned that the court mainly examined the financial activities of the city hall in 2019. It is worth noting that Mayor Mamikon Aslanyan is considered an unreliable figure by the authorities, and the court has uncovered that citizens of Kazakhstan and Russia still owe property taxes to the Vanadzor City Hall from 2019 and have not repaid them to this day.

According to the Court of Auditors, the vehicle property tax base for 2019 includes 7,499 vehicles owned by foreign citizens, which emerged when citizens from EAEU countries, mainly Kazakhstan, registered temporarily in the community. They registered these vehicles in the name of foreigners and took them back to their countries. "Zhoghovurd" has learned that the annual property tax for these vehicles amounts to around 124 million drams, while the municipality's debt at the end of 2019 was approximately 152 million drams.

The Court of Auditors states that taxpayers can be considered risky by the city hall, and the debt to the municipality's budget is deemed unrecoverable. Incidentally, it's worth mentioning that "Zhoghovurd" had reported back in 2019 that citizens from Kazakhstan and Russia come, register at the addresses of our Armenian residents, import and sell vehicles."