The General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Armenia according to the instructions of the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia has undertaken comparative analysis in order to find out the corruption abuses committed from 1 January to 30 June 2020 in the processes of leasing, subleasing and alienation of community and state property.

 
Accordingly, during 2019, 75 criminal cases were initiated on the abuses found out in the process of leasing, subleasing and alienation of community and state property, 108 criminal cases have been initiated only in the first half of 2020, or 33.3% more than in 2019.

 
105 criminal cases out of the total 183 criminal cases initiated in the mentioned period were related with abuses in the process of property alienation, and 78 in the process of leasing and subleasing.

 

Examinations show that as a schematic criminal actions it is more popular the sale of property through fictive auctions or tenders. In particular, the tenders or auctions had formal nature, the second participant of the tender or auction fictively participated the tender to ensure the success of the previously decided participant.

It was substantiated that the person submitting a bid as a second bidder have not actually participated in the tender or auction, or even had no information about his/her participation in it. For their success, the other interested participant submitted documents related to acquaintances or relatives, registering them as second applicant.

Besides, there have been cases when the citizens who bought the lands had close relations with the officials of the region, including the one who organized the auction (community leader, marzpet, etc.). And these lands were bought by means of the data of those citizens, but their real owners were high-ranking state officials.

 
There were also such illegal cases when the lands of the community were changed to agricultural lands for personal interest of the community leader (mayor) with the direct participation of the Head of subdivision of the Cadastre adjunct to the RA Government, without any legal basis, as a result of which they were alienated (for example, in one case the land was alienated for 712.400 AMD instead of 453.949.600 AMD).

 

Besides the mentioned criminal schemes, there were also cases when the state land was alienated as community property, or for example, the reconstructed residential house building, was presented as a consumer services center and alienated to the community leader’s father-in-law as half-destroyed building. As well as lands, not included in the list of restrictions provided for in Article 60 of the RA Land Code which can’t be transferred to citizens and legal entities, administrative buildings without a professional conclusion on the degree of accident of the building, and the land plot allocated to a school of Yerevan city was reduced with 3000 sq. m. alienated to a citizen by auction, who soon divided the land plot into two parts, sold the land plot to the School Director’s son and the relative of the official.

 

During the mentioned 1.5 years (mainly in the first half of 2020) in the course of investigation of cases by the RA competent authorities, the RA Prosecutor’s office has solved 33 lease and sublease agreements of state and community property concluded by means of violations of legislation, in many cases new legal and contract relations were established for public and state interests.

 
The outcomes of the measures undertaken in regard with the criminal prosecution of these criminal cases will be presented soon, including the measures undertaken for recovering the damages caused to the state and the communities.