The leader of the Armenian delegation in PACE, member of the Republican Party of the National Assembly, leader of the State – legal committee of the National Assembly, ex – minister of Justice David Harutyunyan, who is famous as a basic weapon in the hands of authorities abroad, and who, thanks to his knowledge and friendly smiles, can mislead the international community presenting the scandalous situation in Armenia in distorted and rose colouring, is found out to be well – paid for his “dangerous” job. Moreover, David Harutyunyan’s successes abroad are directly – proportional to his financial successes inside Armenia: year after year David Harutyunyan’s and his brothers’ Vahan and Hayk Harutyunyans’ property increases, and the spheres of economic activities widen. At present David Harutyunyan’s family’s name is connected with a row of businesses: transportation of goods, air tickets, legal consultancy sphere, communication, construction. Besides, though only David Harutyunyan’s brothers’ names are mentioned in the documents of those organizations, everybody knows very well confidentially that Harutyunyan brothers’ patronage is David Harutyunyan, who succeeds in creating more and more favourable conditions for his brothers’ businesses using his official post and governmental relations.
“Air Armenia”
Harutyunyan family’s name in the world of business was first announced when it was connected with aviation, when the company called “Armenian airlines” then working with profit was deliberately forced into bankruptcy and ruined, and on the basis of its technical base two companies were formed – “Armavia”, transporting passengers, and “Air Armenia”, transporting goods. The second one directly went to Harutyunyan brothers and to Arsen Avetisyan, the friend of then executive director of “Armenian airlines” Vahan Harutyunyan. The scheme of the bankruptcy was very clear: to force the company into bankruptcy due to various intrigues and to privatize it. The bankruptcy was more than doubtful because even in the post – war 1996 the whole Armenian aviation worked with the pure profit of 15 million dollars of which only 10 million was the pure profit of “Armenian airlines”. But a company having such profits accumulated a debt of 30 million dollars during a few years period. In the beginning of 2000s the actual debt of the company was already 45 million dollars. By the way, some facts were then published also in the international authoritative journal “Air Transport World”. Moreover, the bankruptcy was doubtful also because of the fact that as compared with 1996 the size of the company’s transportation of passengers hadn’t decreased. Let us mention that before the bankruptcy of the company David Harutyunyan’s brother Vahan Harutyunyan was the commercial director of “Armenian airlines”. But because of a financial problem with Vahan Harutyunyan in Armenia the latter was appointed the representative of the company in London. But here, too, Vahan Harutyunyan appeared in a financial scandal: it was found out that a great amount of money had disappeared from the company. After that scandal Vahan Harutyunyan went out from “Armenian airlines”. Meanwhile, Harutyunyans and Avetisyan had already founded the company called “Glob Travel” selling air tickets.
On April 12, 2004 according to the decision made by the economic court, the company “Armenian airlines” was declared bankrupt. By the way, the then minister of Justice David Harutyunyan has had a great preaching role in the process of declaring the company bankrupt. He even gave interviews to mass media on those issues. After having declared bankrupt, the property of “Armenian airlines” was sold. And one of the two companies formed on the basis of the company “Air Armenia” is shared between the ex – Director Arsen Avetisyan and David Harutyunyan’s brother Vahan Harutyunyan – by the correlation 50/50. Besides, if Harutyunyans’ 50% is registered after Vahan Harutyunyan’s name, Arsen Avetisyan’s share is registered by the name of the latter’s mother in documents. And the company “Glob Travel” selling air tickets is divided by the correlation 30/30/30: 30% of the share again belongs to David Harutyunyan’s brother Vahan Harutyunyan, 30% to Arsen Avetisyan, the other 30% belongs to a henchman whose share is actually controlled by Harutyunyans and Avetisyan. That is, “Glob Travel” is also actually divided by 50/50 principle. By the way, both “Glob Travel” and “Air Armenia” are registered in the same address – on 21 Gevorg Qochar Street situated in the centre of Yerevan. At present, “Air Armenia” has a monopolistic position in the sphere of transporting goods, and it realizes transportation of goods for official structures (such as particularly the Ministry of Defence), for big companies and shops promoting economic activity in Armenia. The profits of that company and its owners are constantly increasing: a flat is registered after Vahan Harutyunyan’s name on Byuzand 7, the half of the territory of the company on the street Gevorg Qochar belongs to Vahan Harutyunyan, the other half – to Arsen Avetisyan. The basement of the office is completely registered after Vahan Harutyunyan’s name in the documents. A one – apartment flat situated on Koryun Street, which is also used as the company’s office, is registered after Vahan Harutyunyan’s name. The owners of the company have real estate (particularly, lands) abroad, there are a lot of such expensive cars in the parking area of the company as Bentley. We should also mention that “Air Armenia” realizes not only transportation of goods but also does services of clearing of the customs for some companies: it was particularly “Air Armenia”, which has cleared the company “Beeline” of customs on the expensive equipment brought to Armenia through another company transporting goods. The company also regularly imports building materials to Armenia: according to our information, last time a building material costing about 200 thousand dollars was transported. The other shareholder of the company, Avetisyan, is building a private residence costing about 2 million dollars in Avan district of Yerevan. Besides, a company having a relation to the sphere of protection, after having graduated which the cadres can only work as “guards” in “Air Armenia”, belongs to Harutyunyan brothers. And in spite of the financial success of the movers and shakers of these companies, the employers don’t get salaries regularly though in the accounts department everything is formulated so that the salaries are transferred.
“Harutyunyan and partners”
The legal – Consultancy Company called “Harutyunyan and partners”, which does legal – consultancy services for many big companies and individuals having a remarkable biography, belongs to David Harutyunyan and his brothers. “Harutyunyan and partners” particularly defends the interests of some companies realizing building on the North Prospect (including the interests of the company called “Glendale Hills”, the name of which is also connected with Harutyunyan family), “Harutyunyan and partners” is also the legal – consultant of “Vivacell MTS” and “Air Armenia”. One of the partners of this company is also a famous Diaspora Armenian businessman, whose name and surname in Armenia is Grigor Aghabekyan, who is now imprisoned in France accused in child – contamination and devilism. By the way, Vatican has had a strong participation in his imprisonment. Aghabekyan’s real name and surname aren’t known because the latter is known under different names in different Armenian communities. He has the citizenship of the USA, Lebanon, France and Australia, and according to some data, he had completely changed his face and finger – prints with the help of plastic surgery before the imprisonment because of which he had had serious problems when being arrested in France. According to some data, Aghabekyan had once a charity organization through which he took the children “abroad” to have a rest. The following Aghabekyan has also transferred a great amount of money to his Armenian relatives before the last presidential elections in assistance to Serzh Sargsyan: according to some data, it is spoken about 4 million dollars. It is also spoken that the director of Public Television Alik Harutyunyan owes a great amount of money to the above – mentioned Aghabekyan. According to the information in the governmental circles, Aghabekyan was born in Lebanon, became rich during the years of civil war due to the sale of weapons. They also say that a few years ago Serj Sargsyan’s brother – Sashik Sargsyan had some problems in the USA, and the latter solved his problems thanks to Aghabekyan. But it’s not clear under which name and surname Grigor Aghabekyan presented himself then.
Harutyunyan brothers and the scandal of HSBC
One of Harutyunyan brothers – Hayk, once also worked in HSBC bank. Since 2000 David Harutyunyan’s second brother – Vahan, has also worked in the same bank. Meanwhile, according to the rules of the bank, two people having relationship with each other can’t work in the bank in the same time. But when applying for the job Vahan Harutyunyan hasn’t informed that Hayk Harutyunyan, who was already working in the bank, was his brother. After having worked in the bank for about two months the authorities of the bank suddenly found out the relationship between Harutyunyans after which David Harutyunyan’s brother Vahan Harutyunyan was fired with a great scandal.
Harutyunyan in the Russian Press
A few months ago a row of materials was published in the Russian press about the property of Armenian officials and oligarchs. Particularly, in the material of Russian Wek.ru there was also a reverberation to David Harutyunyan. There was particularly mentioned in the material: “David Harutyunyan is one of the closest and most faithful people of Robert Kocharyan. Harutyunyan has prepared a legal basis for Kocharyan’s all agreements and illegal privatizations, beginning from the privatization of “Armentel”. One of the main sources of his income is the legal office “Harutyunyan brothers”. Taking great honoraria the office makes any verdict in the court real. It was this company which won 1 million dollars from the Greek company OTE (the previous owner of “Armentel”). This was a hidden bribe which OTE gave to Harutyunyan so that the latter didn’t bring any action against OTE in the arbitrage of London. Together with his brother Harutyunyan is considered to be the owner of the company “Cornet”. It was this company which realized the enclosure of the court actions of the owners of many houses situated in the centre of Yerevan. These people were against the elite constructive works on the streets Buzand and the North Prospect. Due to this company not only the legal field of that construction was realized but also the expulsion of the natives of Yerevan from the city centre. The exiled people got an insignificant amount of money and instead the constructive organization belonging to him got right to take part in the elite construction”. There was also mentioned in the material that before the elections of the National Assembly in 2007 the leader of the party “New Times” Aram Karapetyan had announced that David Harutyunyan had a flat in the centre of New York. According to the published material, Harutyunyan hasn’t applied to the court to refute that information. By the way, Harutyunyan hasn’t also anyhow refuted the reality of this material published in the Russian press.
P.S. In the near future we will also present other businesses connected with David Harutyunyan’s name and particularly, the company “Glendale Hills” realizing building.
In the first article of this line we have touched upon only the part of businesses belonging to the leader of the Armenian delegation in PACE, leader of the State – legal committee of the National Assembly, the main weapon in the hands of Armenian authorities on the eyes of international society David Harutyunyan and his brothers. David Harutyunyan is famous for carefully hiding all the criminals done inside Armenia by the authorities of the Republic of Armenia. Besides, David Harutyunyan is also the legal support for all the illegalities done inside the country. That is, this person’s international relations and legal knowledge serve not the country but they are sold to the authorities in principle of services instead of a payment. And the payment received for his services has been given in different ways – money, real estate, and businesses. And the wider is the circle of services done by Harutyunyan, the more become the number of businesses belonging to the latter’s family.
In the previous article we had touched upon the activities of “Air Armenia”, “Globe Travel”, the legal – consultancy company “Harutyunyan and partners”. Now we’ll touch upon the other spheres of Harutyunyans’ businesses.
Economic court
When the economic court was formed in Armenia during a short period of time, Hovhannes Manukyan was appointed the leader of the court. David Harutyunyan and Manukyan have worked quite effective during the activity of the court: all those state companies and factories, which have been recognized bankrupt by the Economic court and then sold, have passed under Harutyunyan’s and Manukyan’s “hands”. This was an expensive – paid job, especially if the decisions of the Economic court received a legal power at once. By the way, in such cases the representative of interests of those who were recognized bankrupt in the court was the same “Harutyunyan and partners” legal – consultancy company belonging to the family of David Harutyunyan. As far as the payment is concerned, as we have already mentioned, for organizing such agreements David Harutyunyan and Hovhannes Manukyan were generously paid: thus, according to the information received from the authoritative circles, only for recognizing the copper – molybdenum group of enterprises bankrupt Harutyunyan and Manukyan received 6 million dollars, and for the “Armenian airlines” – 2 million dollars. Let us remind that after having been recognized bankrupt a part of the company – the transportation of goods, was privatized by David Harutyunyan’s brother Vahan Harutyunyan and the latter’s friend. We should probably understand where Manukyan has such a property from: let us mention that besides Armenia, Manukyan has a real estate also in Sankt – Petersburg, in Turkey, in Greece. It’s also remarkable that when the Economic court was liquidated a part of the actions examined in the court was given to the archive of the Administrative court, and the other part was given to the archives of different courts. But some time later it was found out that a great part of the archives has just disappeared. Even more, even the workers of the president’s control service couldn’t then find those archives: as a result of checking works the control service had found out that a great number of data was missing. By the way, after having done a team – work in the Economic court David Harutyunyan himself mediated that Robert Qocharyan appointed Manukyan the president of the Court of Appeal. And Robert Qocharyan, as everyone knows, highly appreciated David Harutyunyan both as a useful weapon and as a relative: David Harutyunyan has a relationship with Qocharyan’s aunt.
“Glendale Hills”
This organization is familiar to lots of inhabitants of Yerevan and especially those who stayed homeless. It does building works. We should mention that everything is done by the authorities and the state bodies to keep the names of the owners of this company secret. But it’s known that besides other representatives of the authoritative movers and shakers, “Glendale Hills” is also connected with David Harutyunyan. That connection is realized through the diaspora – Armenian Vahe Yaghubyan, who actually presents himself as one of the owners of the company, and who has once worked in the legal – consultancy company “Harutyunyan and partners”, in the Ministry of Justice (when David Harutyunyan was the minister), he has also godfather – godchild relationship with David Haruyunyan. For the purpose of finding out the names of the owners of the company beginning from the month of June we have sent a number of questions to the government, which only during the previous year had given a loan guarantee of about 2 billion drams to that company from the state – budget formed on account of taxes paid by the tax – payers of RA. According to the fixed rules, we had asked the government to give us the whole information, which the government of RA had received about the “Glendale Hills” Ltd. at the moment of making decisions about giving financial guarantees to the latter. And if at first we were receiving some answers, even if they didn’t tell anything, but there were answers, in the end they stopped answering us at all. And the assistant of the prime – minister Tigran Sargsyan – Aram Ananyan avoided answering our calls at all though we had already clearly written in our last inquiry that we have well – grounded doubts that David Harutyunyan and/or his brothers have some connection with the following company and we had also mentioned that we will consider the silence of the government as a positive answer to our question.
According to the official documents, the building company “Glendale Hills” has been registered in May, 2004, in the address Sayat – Nova 19, it has realized building works mainly on the Main Prospect, at present – in Gyumri and Spitak. Moreover, the remarkable thing is that the president of that company Eduard Meliqyan appears in many other building companies, particularly in “City Centre Development” Ltd. (registered in 2006, again in the address Sayat – Nova 19), in “EMC” Ltd. (registered in 2005, again in the address Sayat – Nova 19), in “AG Development” Ltd. (registered in 2006, again in the address Sayat – Nova 19). Besides that another building company – “Downtown Yerevan” Ltd., is registered in that same address – Sayat – Nova 19. The remarkable thing is that from the beginning “Glendale Hills”, according to a number of documents presented by the company in their own blank (there is even an agreement with such details), is as if registered on Amiryan 80. But such an address actually doesn’t exist. As far as the building works are concerned, in the process of snatching the houses out from the hands of the inhabitants in the realization area as cheap and quickly as possible again David Harutyunyan had his role. It was during the years of his being the minister of Justice and it was by his initiative that there were done changes in the Land and Civil codes, and it the legal – consultancy company belonging to his brothers which came to defend the interests of the building company. But the illegalities of “Glendale Hills” haven’t resulted only in leaving hundreds of people homeless, but also in death. Particularly, it was because of “Glendale Hills” that the inhabitant of Byuzand street, house 9, Lilya Ghazaryan died in 2005. The building company offered Lilya Ghazaryan to sell the flat for 18 thousand 500 dollars 230 dollars for 1 square meter in the most expensive district of the city, where the price of each square meter then began from 1000 dollars. But on October 21 Lilya had received a notification that the building company “Glendale Hills” had taken back the application about evicting her, and that the application is stopped, and already a few days later, on November 4, after having taken part in the demonstration in front of the residence of the president, when coming back home Lilya saw that the ladders of the flat were broken, the door to the flat was also broken, and the goods in the flat were already taken away. Lilya Ghazaryan actually stays homeless, and she goes to spend the night in her friend’s house, the next day she is being insulted, the emergency takes her to hospital where she dies in 10 days. 69 – year – old Lilya Ghazaryan was a retired economist. She lived alone. In the case of “Glendale Hills” we should also mention about the constructive works of poor quality. By the way, we speak about the constructive works of such poor quality that even Serj Sragsyan had to touch upon that fact a few months ago. The ceiling of one of the newly – built flats in Gyumri had collapsed a few months after having put into operation.
“Glendale Hills” in European Court
A number of inhabitants in the realization area, having applied to all court instances and not receiving any aid from Armenian courts, have applied to the European Court. In the European Court, the representative of the applicants of a number of applications against RA, lawyer Vahe Grigoryan says that both in the courts inside the country and especially in the European Court there is a stressed approach on behalf of the Armenian government especially towards those cases which refer to “Glendale Hills”. In the court instances inside the country all those questions presented by the government of RA, which refer to the realization works in the lands given to “Glendale Hills” Ltd., were satisfied very quickly, and some of them were satisfied even by a fastened procedure sometimes not even giving an opportunity to the answerers express their points of view. And in any case verdicts of evicting the citizens and/or dispossessing them. At the same time, any mediation, application or complain presented by the citizens wasn’t satisfied although this is generally characterizing for other cases, too, but the forced performers did those court acts very quickly in favour of “Glendale Hills”, and in many cases they went out of the limits of the court act demands themselves. That is, they manifested an additional initiative. I can particularly call a witness the case “Tunyan against RA”, where some of the members of Mrs. Tunyan’s family, whose names weren’t mentioned in the court act, were illegally evicted from their houses by the forced performers without any court act”, says Vahe Grigoryan. As the lawyer says, during the examination of cases against RA in the European Court, if the government of RA refuses to present objections concerning the eviction of the inhabitants from their lands, in the case of “Glendale Hills” it always presents though empty in its nature but very long objections. This can make an impression that the proper department of the Ministry of Justice has a stressed attitude towards “Glendale Hills”.
Hotel “Ani”
Vahe Yaghubyan, who has godfather – godchild relationship with David Harutyunyan, and who was once considered to be a very expensive legal – consultant in the Ministry of Justice, is also the owner of the hotel “Ani” on the prospect of Sayat – Nova situated in the centre of Yerevan. But in fact, in the case of the hotel “Ani” Yaghubyan has the same role as in the case of “Glendale Hills”, i.e. it was due to him that Harutyunyans put their capital in that company.
A mention: Aram Karapetyan’s unanswered questions
Before the last elections of the National Assembly the leader of the party “New Times” Aram Karapetyan had sent a number of questions concerning David Harutyunyan to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office. The questions had the following content: “Is it true that a large 5 – apartment flat in New York costing 3,5 million dollars belongs to David Harutyunyan? Is it true that he is also the owner of a 6 – apartment flat on Zaqiyan street costing more than 200 thousand dollars? Is it true that the legal – consultancy company belonging to Harutyunyan brothers presented by his brothers – Hayk and Vahan Harutyunyans, hasn’t lost in the court till now? Is it true that people apply to David Harutyunyan’s brother – Vahan Harutyunyan, for getting Schenghen visas? Is it true that an enterprise was founded together with diaspora – Armenian Vahe Yaghubyan, and it does the comstructive works on the North Prospect? Is it true that there is a kind of a business – the plane A – 24 flies to Germany for doing charter flights, and that business has a political patronage? How long will it take the Minister of Justice living on a fair salary to accumulate 75 – 80 million dollars in Armenia?”. David Harutyunyan didn’t prosecute Aram Karapetyan for making false data public. Let us remind you that this was only in 2006, and from that time on 4 years have passed, and during this time David Harutyunyan has managed not only to defend the illegalities done by the authorities inside the country on the eyes of international bodies but also to do a lot of legislative changes in favour of the authorities as usual: Criminal Law, Elective Law, “Law about organizing meetings, marches, demonstrations”, etc.
P.S. Here is the person, who is actually responsible for the arbitrary legislative changes done during his officiating years, for the collision of the Justice system and degeneracy, for being accessory to not having revealed the murder of March 1, for hiding the names of real sinners, for having political prisoners and also for the documents against Armenia adopted in various international organizations, because, while being appointed to prevent the appearance of such documents, David Harutyunyan is only busy with hiding the crimes committed by the Armenian criminal authorities.
Photo by PanArmenian Photo
