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On November 29, 2019, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan referred to the activities of the law enforcement system on the occasion of the Day of the Special Investigation Service Officer and the 12th anniversary of the formation of the Service. He noted that looking at the recovery indicators of the damage done to the state it becomes clear that a great deal of work had been done in the sphere.
“There is a lot of talk about how the law enforcement system operates, and I myself have had the opportunity to say that I am not always pleased with the results of the investigation of corruption cases and in particular with the results of the investigation of cases involving officials. This, to be honest, is very easy to record at the political level, however when we dig into the details and record the facts, we see that a great deal of work has been done,”- stated Pashinyan and presented the figures released by SIS Chief Sasun Khachatryan. According to these figures, during the last year of the SIS activities, 7 times more damage caused to the state was recovered than during the last 11 years of SIS existence.
Prior to Pashinyan’s speech, SIS Chief Sasun Khachatryan released official figures. According to them, 4,331,935,000 drams were recovered through SIS criminal proceedings during the 11 months of 2019, while the total amount recovered during the 11 years of the SIS was 597,698,000 drams.
The Fact Investigation Platform tried to find out how much the damage to the state had been and how much had been recovered by the investigative authorities in the 11 months of the criminal investigation in 2019. The Department of Information and Public Relations of the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as separate investigative bodies, in response to the inquiry of the Fip.am, have provided information they possess so far.
National Security Service (NSS)
In the course of 11 months of 2019, as a result of the investigation of criminal cases initiated by the NSS Investigation Department in connection with corruption, hindering economic activity and other crimes, the damage caused by the state amounted to AMD 7,280,796,453, of which AMD 1,869,430,965 was recovered.
Out of this amount AMD 1,642,445,197 was transferred to the state budget, and 226,985,768 AMD is still a deposit.
The National Security Service informs that a voluntary gratuity of $ 3 million equivalent to 1,443,834,016 drams and Golden Palace Hotel Complex in Tsakhkadzor, worth 7,535,900,000 AMD, was handed over during the mentioned period. Thus, as a result of the investigation of the criminal cases initiated in the NSS proceedings, the damage caused to the state during the 11 months amounted to about 7 billion 281 million drams, of which 3 billion 313․5 million drams were recovered, including voluntary gratuity.
State Revenue Committee (SRC)
In the course of 11 months of 2019, the amount of damage caused to the state as a result of investigation by the SRC Investigation Department on corruption, hindering economic activity and other crimes amounted to 15,288,086,980 AMD. During the above mentioned period 35% was restored – 5,427,767,898 AMD, of which 1,113,973,645 AMD was transferred to the deposit account and 4,313,794,253 AMD to the state budget.
Special Investigation Service (SIS)
Property Damage caused to the state revealed through criminal cases completed in 11 months of 2019 amounted to AMD 2,552,441,193, of which 18% was recovered – AMD 472,536,136, while through the preliminary investigation of ongoing criminal cases, including those transferred from 2018, AMD 3,859,399,269 was actually recovered.
From recovered funds 191,334,883 AMD was deposited into Special Investigation Service deposit account for 11 months of 2019, of which AMD 29,101,822 was transferred to the state budget, and AMD 1,698,016 as payment of tax liabilities. The restored funds have also been transferred to the deposit account of other government agencies; however, no information is available about this in the SIS.
Thus, 4 billion 331 million drams was recovered from the damage caused to the state in the cases investigated by the SIS.
Investigative Committee (IC)
The Investigative Committee has provided data for only nine months of 2019. According to them, 3,601,099,568 AMD was recovered from the damage caused to the state within nine months
Prosecutor General’s Office
The Prosecutor General’s Office did not report any damage for 11 months reasoning that the prosecutor’s office does not carry out the accounting for 11 months. In response to the inquiry, it is stated that according to the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office, the Prosecutor General’s Office will release a report on the results of the investigation of the crimes by April 1, 2020, for the 12 months of 2019.
It should be noted that on November 15, the website of the Prosecutor General’s Office published the amount of total damage caused to the state in 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, according to which over the past 1.5 years, the State Prosecutor’s Office has revealed damage of 60.7 billion drams and restored 3.2 billion drams which is several tens of times more than the figures of 2016-2017.
Police
The police informs that the above-mentioned information relates to the data obtained in the cases under investigation of the RA preliminary investigation bodies, about which the police cannot provide accurate and comprehensive information.
Thus, we can state that the amount of damage caused to the state and recovered by the NSS, SIS, SRC and IC alone in the 11 months (9 months in the case of Investigative Committee) amounted to about AMD 16 billion 750 million.
These figures do not show the amount of damage recovered by the Office of the Prosecutor General, but the Office of the Prosecutor General has recovered approximately 3.2 billion drams from the total damage caused to the state in the past 1.5 years alone.
Nelly Lazaryan
