ArmInfo. The Investigative Committee of Armenia continues the preliminary investigation in the case of fraud against the director of A&R tour travel agency. According to the press service of the UK, the director of the travel agency has been charged. Earlier, according to media reports, it became known that due to the cancellation of the Hurghada-Yerevan flight, the OTF3703 number in Egypt left about 100 Armenian citizens.
Based on these publications, it was found that the A&R tour travel agency, from the beginning of 2019 to July, organized tourist vacations of Armenian citizens in the cities of Egypt - Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh, and even sent some of them to these resorts. In the course of investigative actions in the framework of this criminal case, the mechanism of fraud operating in this company was established.
It was found that the director of the travel agency published on social networks announcements that the company will organize tourist vacations in the cities of Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh from the summer of 2019. At the same time, the charter package and rest in hotels of Egypt were allegedly included in the price of the tour package. In order to purchase permits, a huge number of citizens turned to the agency and paid considerable amounts for their vacation. Meanwhile, as it turned out, charter flights to Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh were canceled from July 23, as a result of which the vacation of citizens in Egypt was interrupted.
According to the investigation, during this period of time, a number of AMD 30.616.995 were stolen from a number of citizens who applied to the agency. The director of the travel agency was charged with fraud, as a preventive measure in respect of the latter, a recognizance not to leave was chosen.
It should be noted that passengers of the Hurghada-Yerevan flight OTF3703, who were supposed to fly to Yerevan on July 25, were stuck in Egypt due to dishonesty of the tour operator. As it became known, the Armenian tourists who purchased tickets from the A&R tour company could not fly out of Hurghada due to the cancellation of the flight. About 100 people spent the whole day either at the airport or in hotels and could not fly back. In total, about 400 Armenian tourists suffered from the actions of the travel agency, including also those who had not yet flown to Egypt, and those who could not return home. The Armenian government organized two flights to Egypt in order to return tourists stuck there home.