Arthur Danielyan, the founder of the Adequate Union, writes on his Facebook page: “The State Property Management Committee was supposed to sell state property worth 5 billion drams in the first half of the year according to the plan. Roughly speaking, the property was to be sold, including those assets being returned ‘penny for penny’ by Pashinyan. The property was to be seized, sold, and the money brought into the budget. Let’s set aside the issue of seizing, the volume of seized property, and the fact that law enforcement has spent more on seizing than the value of the seized property. Can you guess how much money has entered the budget from the sale of property? You will find it difficult. The number is zero. Exactly zero. They planned a round 5 billion for the half-year, and they made a round zero. The picture over the past eight years is not much different from this figure:
There are several reasons, the main one being that there are no willing buyers. And the issue is not that Pashinyan assigns some incredible market values to that property when seizing it; in practice, people are not even willing to buy that property at significantly lower than market prices:
People are unwilling because they know very well how that property was seized. They catch on that today or tomorrow someone will come after that property, whether it’s the old owner or a new authority claiming that it was seized illegally:
For example, Ararat Cement was seized, claiming that the factory sold cement for cash, which, by the way, is true. But this truth has a continuation: the cash cement was sold to the builder who can afford to build a building with cash, and that is invariably the case with corrupt officials. In the morning they go to work, boldly fighting against corruption, and in the afternoon they build high-rise buildings with money of unknown origin:
And since they cannot deposit the money in the bank without declaring it, they do everything in cash. Naturally, the tax authorities will never disclose who specifically that cement was sold to in cash:
Now imagine a hypothetical person named Narek Nalbandyan comes along and buys Ararat Cement. Let’s say a year passes and the government changes. What do you think will happen to this ‘honest’ buyer? The owner of every seized property will come back, if not the owner, then someone from his entourage. And any subsequent normal government will stand behind him:
This is the foundation of economics. Not to mention that there are plenty of such properties under state management that have long been embezzled without even being put up for auction:
There is no sector where they have not caused trouble. And even if the state somehow miraculously survives, it will have to clean up these messes for decades, and the big question is what will remain underneath…”
