State-owned real estate sold for five times less than market value; 15 criminal cases initiated

During the first half of 2021, the Republic of Armenia's Prosecutor General's Office conducted an examination of the state interest protection division regarding the sale of state-owned real estate by the State Property Management Committee of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure from 2016 to 2020. This information was provided by the Prosecutor General's Office.

Through selective studies, it was revealed that in several instances, responsible officials from the State Property Management Department misused their positions in violation of the requirements of Article 9, Part 2 of the Law on Real Estate Valuation Activities. Without any legal basis or contracts, they offered the company "F..." LLC to conduct real estate valuation work in 2016-2017.

Specialists from the LLC produced 15 false conclusions, certified by the director of the mentioned LLC, which evaluated assets worth 378,700,000 AMD at only 135,016,137 AMD, approximately three times less than their real valuation. This estimation was used by the competition commission as the basis for auctioning off the mentioned real estate.

As a result, these properties were sold for a total of 79,144,580 AMD, approximately five times less than their actual value, causing a loss of around 299,555,420 AMD to the state.

Based on the identified facts, the Prosecutor General's Office has initiated 15 criminal cases under the features of Articles 308, Parts 1 and 2 of the Criminal Code of Armenia. The investigation of the initiated criminal cases has been entrusted to the Investigative Committee of Armenia.

The Prosecutor's Office will continue to systematically pursue cases of abuse and violations in the process of selling state-owned real estate, aiming to uncover criminal schemes and hold those responsible accountable under the law.

Notice: A suspect or accused individual is presumed innocent until proven guilty in accordance with the procedure established by the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia by a court decision that has entered into legal force.