- FBI agents arrived in Armenia to track down $165 million stolen by an Armenian criminal syndicate in the USA. There are rumours of some sort of connection between this case and the case ex-mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov and ex-MP Ashot Yegisaryan. To what degree is Armenia open to these kinds of illegal operations?
- Money laundering is not a specifically Armenian problem. The whole world is now facing this problem, as the banking regulation systems are out-of-date. And the global financial crisis made things even worse. Foreign currency circulation is a risk factor, and dollar circulation in Armenia is not under governmental control. Moreover, the Armenian economic system is oligarchic, so it is inclined towards shadow operations.
- How could $165 million get transferred from the USA to Armenia, if the US attentively supervises capital transactions?
- There are a lot of means of bypassing all the control systems and make illegal transactions, one-day enterprises, pricing instability for example. The law on ‘banking secrecy’ made it even easier to cover up such actions. Special control bodies aimed at money laundering prevention have been working in Armenia for several years now, but without any visible results.
- How is it possible to fix such an affair without the government knowing about it in a country with an economic system like the Armenian one? - Officially all operations are to be carried out under governmental control, but de facto the system is greatly affected by oligarchs, corruption and criminal elements. Tax income forms 17% of Armenia's gross domestic product, while in all other states it constitutes 40-60% or even 80%. So the system itself implies considerable sums of money circulating without any control.- In other words, no official or unofficial control bodies can provide the necessary level of control? - Means of control can be perfected, but the whole problem, as well as the world crisis itself, is just consequence of global banking system malfunctions. Anyway, the FBI agents are trying to track down the transaction chains in Armenia.- The Armenian Central Bank declared that not even the FBI is authorized to check bank accounts in Armenia.
- According to the law, these actions can be carried out by court decision. Not all special services get in contact with the suspects or country’s officials; it traces the network of their transactions. In such a way the FBI could track down those bureaucrats involved in illegal operations and exert pressure on the country’s government.
- So you think that Armenian and Russian ‘lists’ are connected?- Yes, of course. Two things happening at the same time in the same place should definitely be connected to each other.
Interview by David Stepanyan, Yerevan, exclusively to VK.
