The General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Armenia received the documents from the RA State Control Service regarding the examination on the outcomes of the monitoring of the lease process of the land plots of the SNCO “Institute of Botany after A. Takhtajyan NAS RA”. In connection with this, in the result of the examination carried out within the framework of the function of protection of state interests, factual data containing features of corruption were revealed.
In particular, the study revealed that right to permanent use given to the SNCO's for the land plot situated at Yerevan, Acharyan Street, 1 is "residential", and the operational significance is "to organize a botanical garden."
In 2016 the SNCO has concluded an one-year land lease agreement with "L ... G ..." LLC for the lease of land plot with 1000sq. m., the term of which every year has been extended, so it was extended up to December 31, 2020.
The RA State Control Service conducted examination at place and revealed that the LLC uses the mentioned land plot for the purchase and sale of construction material, which does not correspond to the operational significance of that land plot "organizing a botanical garden".
Though the lease agreement stipulated that the agreement could be terminated prematurely at the request of the landlord in case it was used with significant or multiple breaches, the responsible officials of the SNCO have not undertaken measures in order to return the land plot.
The SNCO concluded a contract of 3000 sq. m. land plot with another company "Q ... G ..." on December 30, 2011, for landscaping the term of which was extended until December 31, 2018. However, as of March 12, 2020, the area is separated by a concrete wall, and the area has not been returned to the SNCO after the expiration of the contract. It turned out that the company was engaged in the retail trade of fruits and vegetables in the mentioned area. That is to say, in this case too, although the land was not used in accordance with the operational significance of "organizing botanical garden" provided by the contract, the responsible officials of the SNCO have not undertaken measures to terminate the contract.
It also turned out that by violating the requirements of Decisions adopted on 22.02.2001 and 24.12.2003 by RA Government the mentioned land plot was leased to the LLC for 62,000 AMD per month, which was later changed to 1.2 million AMD per year (100 thousand AMD per month).
Meanwhile, in case of compliance with the requirements of the mentioned decisions of the RA Government, the rental charge of the area should have been twice as much, at least 2.5 million AMD per year or about 209 thousand AMD per month.
That is to say, the rent of the leased land was calculated less and totally 12 million AMD was charged, causing the SNCO the same amount of damage.
Taking into account the factual data obtained by the officials monitoring the abuse of official powers in the result of the monitoring and investigation, a criminal case was initiated at the Department of State Interests Protection of the RA General Prosecutor's Office under Article 308, Part 1 of the RA Criminal Code.
The criminal case was sent to the RA Investigative Committee for preliminary investigation.
Notice: Every person suspected in or charged with a criminal offense shall be presumed innocent unless proved guilty in the manner prescribed by the RA Criminal Procedure Code and unless the verdict comes into legal force.
