Vanetsyan is against bonus pays. But wait, he also received them

On May 22, the interview with Artur Vanetsyan, former director of the National Security Service and chairman of the board of trustees of the “Homeland” Development Fund, was published by the Hraparak daily.

Criticizing the policy pursued by the current authorities in the interview, Vanetsyan stated: “As for the anti-crisis government, I think there are many individuals in Armenia, representatives of political forces who are professional, patriotic, who can serve their homeland without any bonus pays and contribute to the development of our homeland.”

The Fact Investigation Platform decided to find out whether Artur Vanetsyan received bonus pays during his tenure as the director of the National Security Service.

How much income did Artur Vanetsyan declare?

Thus, Artur Vanetsyan was appointed director of the National Security Service immediately after the Revolution, on May 10, 2018.

According to the official declaration posted on the website of the Corruption Prevention Commission, at the time of assuming the position, Vanetsyan mentioned an income of 1 million 800 thousand AMD as a salary and / or other equivalent payments (since January 2018).

According to the annual declaration for 2018 posted on the same website, Vanetsyan’s annual income amounted to 8 million 904 thousand AMD.

In other words, from the moment of assuming the post of the director of the National Security Service until the end of the year, Artur Vanetsyan received a salary and other payments of about 7 million 50 thousand AMD.

Artur Vanetsyan was dismissed from the post of NSS director on September 16, 2019.

In the declaration submitted on the day of his resignation, Vanetsyan noted that from January 1 to September 16, 2019, he received a salary and equivalent payments of 14 million 341 thousand AMD.

This means that during the 16 months and 6 days of holding the position of the director of the National Security Service, Vanetsyan received a salary and other equivalent payments of 21 million 391 thousand AMD.

The salary of the director of the National Security Service

Meanwhile, according to the Law on Remuneration of Persons Holding Public Offices, the official employment rate of a person holding the position of Director of the National Security Service is 12. To understand how much this official’s salary is, we need to multiply the rate by the base salary (not to be confused with the minimum wage).

The base salary has not changed in recent years, and according to the RA Law on the State Budget, it is 66,140 AMD, and, thus, Arthur Vanetsyan’s gross salary was 793,680 AMD, and the net salary was 605 thousand AMD.

It turns out that according to very approximate calculations, Vanetsyan received about 10 million AMD as a salary, vacation pay and final settlement during the 16 months and 6 days of his tenure.

Meanwhile, as we see, Artur Vanetsyan’s income during his tenure was 21.4 million AMD (as mentioned in the declarations), which exceeds his salary by 11.4 million AMD. And since the income mentioned in the declaration refers not only to the salary, but also to other equivalent payments (reward, bonus pay, incentive pay, etc.), it results that Vanetsyan received a bonus pay of 11.4 million AMD.

Thus, it should be noted that in the interview Vanetsyan doubts the ability or devotion of the officials receiving bonus pays to serve the homeland, while during the period of leading the NSS he received more than 11 million AMD in bonus / surcharge pay.

Sevada Ghazaryan