ArmInfo. Official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova commented on the criticism of the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan against the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC).
She recalled that Simonyan said: "It is necessary to discuss why the church does not pay taxes, and in general, from a legal point of view, it is necessary to reconsider what a priest whose hands are kissed is doing higher than an ordinary businessman who pays taxes and buys ammunition for the army." "In parallels, in the Verkhovna Rada, the European Solidarity faction and Petro Poroshenko demand that the issue of a complete ban on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church be put on the agenda again. Why do those whom Westerners begin to direct literally demonized??" she asked.
On May 21, the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Alen Simonyan, said that he would like to understand why representatives of the church are above business, and why the church is not in the tax field and does not pay taxes. "For me personally, large taxpayers are the most important people, because they are the ones who finance the security of Armenia," he said, while expressing dissatisfaction with the fact that protesters were gathering in the courtyard of St. Anne's Church.
The head of the chancellery of the Mother See of Etchmiadzin, Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan, reacting to Simonyan's words, noted that the allegations that the church does not pay taxes, to put it mildly, are a lie. In this vein, Khachatryan accused the speaker of parliament of verbiage and spreading false information. After information appeared online that the AAC was one of the 1,000 major taxpayers in Armenia, Simonyan decided to justify himself by posting articles of laws that listed tax benefits provided for the Church. The Armenian Apostolic Church is included in the list of 1000 taxpayers in Armenia. At the end of 2023, it paid out more than 435 million drams, taking 758th place in the list, and over 147 million drams according to the results of the first quarter of 2024, ranking 488th.