Monday, December 17 2018 20:59

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.