Sakunts: “They cause RA territory to become a criminal money-laundering area”
10:12, October 12, 2016 | News, Other news
As reported before, Marina Poghosyan, Chairperson of ‘Veles’ human rights NGO, presented an incident of Russian money-laundering in Armenia. The press conference held at ‘Media Center’ was also attended by Artur Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office and the investigative service of the Republic of Armenia do not act first of all in the state interests of the Republic of Armenia and do not protect the public property; they do not perform their functions as prescribed by the Republic of Armenia to prevent money laundering. Furthermore, by their inaction and deliberate slowness they cause the Republic of Armenia territory to become a criminal money realization and laundering area”, the human rights activist said.
According to Artur Sakunts, the incident presented by Marina Poghosyan is only an episode: “This gives us reason to think that this scheme works in a variety of areas, as evidenced by the recent offshore scandal caused by the Panamanian papers with involvement of the Head of Compulsory Enforcement Service. Instead of carrying out a thorough investigation into the crime, the law enforcement officers start absolutely groundless prosecution against the person who signaled about the crime. It’s about big sums of money; it’s a mechanism, which as we could see, operates with involvement, participation and criminal inaction of many other state agencies.”
According to the human rights activist, the only victim in this case is businessman Dmitri Afonin: “Perhaps, they saw that their initial transfers did not meet the arrangement or they were dissatisfied and thought that they might involve another person to invest money in construction of apartments. These persons did not act with Victor Ter-Hovsepyan by accident; they live in the same street in Moscow.”