Yerevan Mayor questioned in ANIF Case

ArmInfo. Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan was questioned as a witness in the ANIF State Interests Fund's  case, as he confirmed while answering journalists' questions during a press conference on September 15.

He also noted that the criminal case was not related to him personally or to  Fund's Board, of which he was the chairman. "I was questioned in the ANIF case a year and a half ago. And I passed on all the information I had to the relevant authorities," the mayor said.

Avinyan said that things were not as bad at the Fund as the public had been told. "ANIF attracted $210 million in investments and created 800 new jobs. The state invested 4.019 billion drams in the Fund, and its subsidiary returned 5.5 billion drams to the state in taxes," he said.

The mayor also touched upon one of the Fund's projects involving the training of cybersecurity specialists by the newly created CFW company (51% of the shares belong to the American Orbis, 49% to the ANIF Fund). Hetq research resource  conducted an investigation on this project, revealing a friendly relationship between the mayor's wife and the director of CFW, Karine Andreasyan. In this regard, Avinyan assured that both he and his wife had met Karine Andreasyan in the same year  the project was launched.

According to him, Orbis and ANIF had created a new company in Armenia - CFW, the purpose of which was to train cybersecurity specialists in Armenia - under the Orbis program. The latter, upon completion of the course, were to provide their services to state and private companies.

"The process of training specialists is underway. Then one of our colleagues, the Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan, when I was already working in the mayor's office and did not hold the position of the Chairman of the Council, constantly spoke about the poor management of ANIF and ineffective activities.  He proposed transferring the Fund to the structure of the Ministry of Economy. Then he made personnel changes, which ultimately led the members of the Council and Orbis employees deciding to discontinues their activities," Avinyan presented the situation from his side.

In light of the ongoing discussion regarding money laundering related to the ANIF fund, Tigran Avinyan presented additional information for the attention of law enforcement agencies. "In my opinion, this could be due to  the fact that CFW was founded by ANIF and two companies - Hayk and Ararat, which were registered by Orbis in the USA. That is, the investigative bodies may not have information about the connection of these two companies with Orbis, but I suggest making a request to Armenbrok or the USA to clarify this episode," the mayor said. Additionally, he pointed out that ANIF's activities were annually audited by the specialized international company KMPG.