Large Amount Stolen Through Fraud: Investigative Committee of Armenia

The Investigative Committee of Armenia has reported significant findings in an ongoing criminal investigation concerning crimes against property at a local municipality in the Shirak region. This was revealed by the Investigative Committee's main department overseeing particularly important cases.

Specifically, a lead specialist at the municipality, identified as S.H., utilized an identification card transferred to him by the former community leader along with the password to access accounting software. He submitted false reports to the municipal council and the Shirak regional administration regarding the availability of financial resources in the budget's fund part for the same years.

S.H. accessed the accounting software through his and the former community leader's respective accounts, composing and approving electronic documents regarding changes to the budget plan and payment orders. Subsequently, he transferred funds allocated for salary payments from various expenditure program funds to a transit account for the community budget. He then created payment orders using the former community leader’s electronic signature, which resulted in the transfer of a total of 50,464,100 AMD from the community treasury to his bank accounts over the years. Of this amount, 1,323,759 AMD was paid to cover underpaid salaries of municipal employees, while a particularly large sum of 49,140,341 AMD was fraudulently embezzled.

During the investigation, 4,500,000 AMD was restored to the community budget, and a seizure was placed on properties equivalent to the unrecovered damage amount. S.H. has been subjected to public criminal prosecution under Article 255, Part 3, Clause 3 of the Criminal Code of Armenia for fraud committed in particularly large amounts. A measure to prevent his absence has been applied.

The criminal case has been forwarded to the supervising prosecutor with a recommendation to confirm it and submit it to the court for examination.

Note: An accused individual is presumed innocent until proven guilty in accordance with the law, by a court judgment that has entered into legal force.