VIDEO: Pashinyan Discusses Funds of the Armenia All-Armenian Fund

During the 44-day war, the Armenian diaspora and Armenia collected funds penny by penny for the "Armenia" All-Armenian Fund to support our army and the two states. Later, the fate of those funds became a source of great doubts. This was stated by Hayk Mamijanyan, a member of the "I Have Honor" parliamentary group, during a question-and-answer session with the government.

"There was simply budgetary funding; funds from the foundation were directed to the budget. Subsequently, on March 15, the decision was made by the board of trustees of the foundation to create a working group that, in cooperation with a less well-known auditing organization, was supposed to conduct an audit and present it to the public for scrutiny to clarify all doubts. The deadline for that was April 5, and I am interested to know what happened with that auditing organization," he said.

In response to the question, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, "I would like to add two important nuances to the events you mentioned. In the results of the board of trustees you referred to, a statement was disseminated. I guarantee that the Board of Trustees has recorded that it listened to my report and noted that there were no abuses or misappropriations of the collected funds, after which a working group was established and an audit was conducted. As a member of the Board of Trustees, I am aware that this work has been carried out. I cannot say whether it has been published or not, but as far as I know, the audit results did not record anything problematic."

Responding to Nikol Pashinyan's answer, Mamijanyan noted that the discussion primarily concerns the approximately 52 billion drams sent to the budget, which, according to the disseminated statement, were spent on military expenses.

"The 'I Have Honor' parliamentary group will initiate the establishment of a special investigation committee to oversee the expenditure of the All-Armenian Fund's resources, its effectiveness, promptness, and selection of sectors. There is sufficient reason to suspect that the budgetary funding was related to the lack of funds in the budget and that these funds were spent," he said.

Nikol Pashinyan regarded the information regarding military expenditures as a misunderstanding. "The government has never stated that the funds of the 'Armenia' All-Armenian Fund were spent on military needs. The government has stated that it has allocated more than 100 billion drams for the needs arising from the war in the post-war period. Of that 100 billion, 52 billion came from the resources of the 'Armenia' All-Armenian Fund. Therefore, public funds could not have been allocated. The resources of the fund were spent for the purposes set forth in the foundation's charter," Pashinyan stated.