Charges Filed Against 3 Officials from Social Affairs Ministry in Small Homes for Seniors Case

Charges have been filed against three officials from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in connection with the small homes purchased for seniors. One of them is accused of abusing official authority and official forgery, while the other two face charges of aiding in official forgery. This was reported by the news outlet ‘Hetq’.

The officials facing charges include the chief specialist of the ministry’s procurement coordination department, the head of the same department, and the minister's advisor. Two of them have been released under a signature not to leave the country, while one was arrested but has been released by a court decision. According to Arevik Khachatryan, head of the public relations department at the Prosecutor General's Office, the prosecutor has filed an appeal against the court's decision.

It should be noted that the criminal case was initiated based on a publication by ‘Hetq’ from June 2020. In the Aragatsotn Province, specifically in the communities of Mrgashen, Aknashen, and Geghakert, three homes were purchased to enhance the provision of care services for the elderly. Although the houses were supposed to be suitable for living, it was discovered that two of the expensive houses purchased were not suitable for habitation and required major renovations.

The small houses in Mrgashen and Aknashen were sold to the ministry by ‘Lexhab’ LLC as an intermediary. The company’s shareholder, Pavel Tadevosyan, is the son of Simizar Hovhannesyan, a judge of the Yerevan City Court. The judge’s nephew, Yeghishe Derenik Hovhannesyan, also submitted a purchase application but was not selected.

It is worth mentioning that the houses proposed by the judge's son were in the most dilapidated condition, featuring old wooden windows, some without glass, covered in polyethylene bags. The roofs were already damaged, and parts of the asbestos shingles were broken and detached.

The plan to acquire a small house in Geghakert was facilitated by an agreement signed between the ministry and the ‘Avondglans’ foundation, headed by Rob Zik, the honorary consul of Armenia in Amsterdam. To carry out the construction and furnishing of the community small house, the foundation was to provide the ministry with €100,000. The contract was signed with Anna Yeritsyan, as she proposed the lowest price of 15 million 974 thousand drams. For comparison, the houses in Aknashen and Mrgashen were purchased for 26 million 950 thousand and 26 million 730 thousand drams respectively.

The house purchased in Geghakert was also not in particularly good condition, but compared to the other two houses, it required minimal external renovations.

According to Zarouhi Manucharyan, spokesperson for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the private houses purchased in Aknashen, Mrgashen, and Geghakert are currently not serving as small homes, but the renovation project planning works have been done. “At least one will be renovated in 2022, for which financial resources are provided from the state budget as well as from the Dutch ‘Avondglans’ foundation, which funded the purchase of the house in Geghakert,” Zarouhi Manucharyan noted.