Armenian prosecutors initiate criminal investigation into illegal privatization of Yerevan's Hrazdan stadium

YEREVAN, February 14. /ARKA/. Armenian Prosecutor General's Office initiated a criminal case on the fact of privatization of "Hrazdan" stadium in Yerevan in 2004 at a cost that was 200 times lower than the real one. 

The crime was reported to the Anti-Corruption Committee.According to the case materials, in 2001 the stadium, which was 100% owned by the state, was leased to "Hrazdan Sports Complex Lease Enterprise" CJSC together with auxiliary buildings of 62 thousand square meters and a land plot of 14 hectares.

In 2004, the state sold to this enterprise most of the sports complex (about 10.4 hectares of land and 61.7 thousand square meters of space). The price of the deal was  87 million 520 thousand drams, while the stadium was valued much more expensive - 11.6 billion drams (16.2  billion  drams in current prices).

In order to justify the obviously underestimated sale price, the State Property Management Committee issued a certificate, according to which the tenant company invested more than 900 thousand US dollars in the stadium in 2001-2004. However, the prosecutor's office found out that the company's balance sheet did not contain a single act of capital work done during the three years of the lease.

A few months later, on January 7, 2005, by the decision of the general meeting of the company, its shareholder A. A., as part of the privatization agreement, undertook to invest $2 million in the development of the stadium (until 2009).