ArmInfo.Upon abuse of authority former deputy minister of transport, communications and information technology, framework of the case of the South Caucasian Railway (SCR), the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia opened a criminal case. As noted in the official report of the Department of the Investigative Committee, in the course of a comprehensive investigation into the case of abuses committed during the operation of the South Caucasian Railway CJSC, factual data on alleged abuses by the RA Ministry of Transport, Communications were revealed.
According to the preliminary investigation, on February 7, 2008, the Government of the Republic of Armenia, within the framework of the signed concession agreement with Russian Railways on the transfer of the railway infrastructure of Armenia, 100% to the subsidiary of Russian Railways, for the 30-year period, fixed the investment in the amount of 122.348 in the agreement billion for the modernization of railway infrastructure and 52.209 billion for the modernization of rolling stock.
According to the concession agreement, the ministry was obliged to annually conduct research on the implementation by the concessionaire of its contractual obligations. To this end, the Ministry of Transport signed an agreement with an auditing company for a total amount of 40 million drams - to conduct a financial and technical audit of SCR. The audit report on the activities of SCR in 2008-2013, presented in February 2015, indicated that there were major financial irregularities, including construction work in the infrastructure sector in the total area of 428 million drams (about $ 950 thousand) that were not fulfilled by SCR.The deputy minister supervising and responsible for this work, proceeding from group interests, as the investigation notes, actually ignored the facts of major embezzlement and possible embezzlement recorded in the audit report, and did not report them to the law enforcement agencies. As a result, no effective measures were taken to eliminate financial irregularities within the framework of the investment commitments of SCR under the concession agreement. Based on the above, the Central Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia initiated a criminal case against the former Deputy Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technologies under Article 208 of the RA Criminal Code and transferred it to the Special Investigation Service. According to the preliminary data of ArmInfo, most likely it is about the former First Deputy Minister of Transport and Communication Arthur Arakelyan, who was appointed to this post during the ex-minister Gagik Beglaryan, nicknamed "Black Gago", and is one of his close people.