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Corruption In Armenia: Esti Hametsek...

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  • Corruption In Armenia: Esti Hametsek...

    CORRUPTION IN ARMENIA: ESTI HAMETSEK...
    By Oshin Peroomian

    Noyan Tapan
    29.10.2011

    In what I can only characterize as the twisted modern-day version of
    "Gikor", our honorable President, Serg Sarkissian, has repeatedly asked
    the diaspora to come and invest in the homeland and have an input in
    making Armenia a prosperous nation. For all those brave souls that
    are actually considering heeding the president's call and do not have
    "friends" in the highest of places in the government of Armenia,
    I simply offer a story which should give some pause.

    In the fall of 2005, I bought a 2,500 square meter land on the hills
    overlooking Yerevan (in Nork). I purchased this land from Mr. Andranik
    Ghulijanyan for a total sum of 88,000,000 AMD (about $ 195,000 at
    that time). The original lot size owned by Mr. Ghulijanyan was 5000
    square meters. Since, I did not want to purchase the entire lot, I
    requested that Mr. Ghulijanyan split the parcel in two halves so that
    I could purchase only half the land (the amount I could afford). Mr.

    Ghulijanyan filled out the proper paperwork at the Republic of
    Armenia's (RA) Kadatsr in Yerevan, which is the government body
    responsible for issuing deeds in the RA, and requested that the deed be
    separated into two. After doing their due diligence, the Kadastr split
    the original deed and issued two deeds each for 2500 square meters. As
    a side note, the RA Kadatsr would not have completed this process if
    there were any leans or judgments against this parcel of land.

    After the Kadastr issued the two deeds, with the help of my lawyer in
    Armenia, we completed the transaction via notary public and recorded
    the transaction with Kadastr. The RA Kadastr issued a new deed listing
    me as the titleholder for the 2500 square meter parcel. To this day,
    no state official has called into question the legitimacy of my
    transaction and the deed that I hold. This is an important fact to
    keep in mind as you read the rest of this story.

    In fall of 2006, a few months after my family and I moved to Armenia,
    I got a call from the Nork-Marash courthouse inquiring as to why
    I had failed to appear in court. I had no idea what the phone call
    was about so my lawyer and I headed to the courthouse to ascertain
    the reason for the verbal summons (verbal summons are illegal in
    Armenia). To our surprise, we found that the city of Yerevan had
    taken Andranik Ghulijanyan to court for not properly paying for the
    5000 square meter land, which he had originally bought from the City
    of Yerevan. Since Mr. Ghulijanyan no longer owned the entire piece
    of the land, I was subsequently included as a defendant in the civil
    trial. In fact, not only was my summons to court done verbally, the
    civil charges against me were also entered verbally (both strictly
    against the rule of law in Armenia). The judge simply saw fit to add
    the changes against me midway through the trial based on a verbal
    request from the attorney representing the city.

    The laws (in Armenia) are very clear in this matter. I did not purchase
    my land from the city of Yerevan; and, when I purchased the land,
    Mr. Ghulijanyan was the rightful owner of that land. My transaction
    with him followed the letter of the law and thus the only recourse for
    the city of Yerevan was to sue Mr. Ghulijanyan for the money they were
    owed for half the land (my half) and request his portion of the land
    to be returned. As a bona fide purchaser, there are several statutes
    (in Armenian law) that protect my purchase. The city officials had
    written in their brief that since they wanted the original purchase
    agreement of the land with Ghulijanyan nullified, it should follow
    that I my purchase agreement be nullified as well.

    Clearly not the case under Armenian law!

    During our civil trial, it became clear that a group of people (kadastr
    employees, bank employees and other officials and civilians) had been
    arrested for falsifying documents and receipts and pocketing the money
    that was to be paid into the state treasury for the original purchase
    of the land (when Ghulijanyan purchased it from the city). It turned
    out that over a hundred transactions of this type where conducted with
    a massive loss to the state treasury. The state had started criminal
    proceedings against the aforementioned group and had seized all their
    assets. I will not get into how those assets were auctioned off and
    how much money was actually put into the treasury since no one can
    actually give the correct number. The items auctioned off were at
    pennies on the dollar and probably made the corrupt officials handling
    this case even richer than they should be!! The president of Armenia,
    at that time the honorable Robert Kocharyan, had come up with a "kam
    hoghe kam poghe" policy and ordered every one of these landowners
    (whether complicit or not in the criminal activities) be taken to
    civil court. It was clear from the judges manning these trials that
    a fair trial was not going to be possible. In nearly all the cases,
    the civil defendants were forced to pay what was owed to the state a
    second time, even "defendants" that were bona-fide purchasers who did
    not purchase their parcels from the city. Again, I don't think anyone
    knows exactly by how-many fold these payments exceeded the original
    "loss" to the state budget. I was one of the lone holdouts. The lawyers
    from kadastr and the city said that this would simply go away if I
    paid what was owed to the city. It really didn't concern them that I
    had rightfully purchased the land (and not from the city) and that I
    had paid much more than the 33,000,000 AMD that the city was asking
    for (the total sum was 66,000,000 for the 5000 square meter land).

    In my original trial, the judge was very prejudicial and did not
    even want to consider the fact that there were people being held
    on criminal charges in this matter. Armenia law clearly states that
    criminal proceedings in a given case supersede the civil proceedings
    because any evidence and convictions stemming from the criminal trial
    will have a direct consequence and relevance in the civil trial. The
    judge did not see it that way and did not want to postpone the trial
    until the end of the criminal proceedings. We questioned the judge's
    impartiality and made a formal request for his removal. The court
    magistrate, by law, had to take the matter under advisement and
    notify us in writing whether our request would be granted. About 15
    days after our request, my lawyer called and said that he had "heard"
    that the judge was going to announce a verdict in my case the following
    day. I was completely shocked. Well, I shouldn't say that since someone
    who has lived in Armenia as long as I have, rarely gets shocked at
    anything anymore. We showed up the next day at the courthouse and
    the judge was clearly surprised to see us in the courtroom. In fact,
    none of the other parties were in court. He read the verdict and
    literally ran out of the courtroom afterwards. We asked the court
    clerk about the response to our request for the removal of the judge
    and she handed us the refusal letter after the verdict was announced.

    Under Armenia law, one has 15 days to appeal court rulings and we went
    ahead and appealed the verdict. The case got assigned to the Appeal's
    Court (civil division). As an American citizen, I also notified the
    American Embassy about the "troubles" I was having with the judicial
    system in Armenia. The Embassy was extremely helpful in many ways.

    They offered to be at the appeal's court proceedings and to write
    letters on my behalf to the Foreign Ministry of Armenia. At the first
    court session in the appeals division, we asked the three-judge panel
    to postpone the trial until the end of the criminal proceedings in
    this matter. The judges said that they would issue their ruling on
    that motion at the next session. I was very sure that the judges were
    going to rule against us so I asked the embassy if they could have an
    official present at the second session. Mr. Jeff Gringer, the deputy
    consul for the US embassy in Yerevan, agreed to come to the trial. As
    the session began and we introduced the people in the courtroom
    (including the deputy consul), pandemonium broke out in the courtroom.

    What could only be described as a scene from a badly adapted John
    Grisham novel, the judges called a 15 minute recess and the Kadastr
    and City lawyers started frantically talking on their cell phones. The
    court was called into session 20 minutes later and the judges agreed
    to postpone the trial and grant our motion. I wonder what would have
    happened if the ambassador had shown up at the trial (although we
    did not have an ambassador to Armenia at that time).

    Fast-forward a few years to the fall of 2010. The criminals were tried
    and convicted. The state, in their criminal case, had clearly shown
    that the convicted were the ones who had defrauded the state. So, with
    the criminal verdicts at hand, our trial began once again. Even if
    the other laws that I mentioned in the beginning of the article were
    not enough, now the judges had criminal verdicts in their procession
    clearly showing who was to blame for the fraud perpetrated on the
    city. As the case proceeded, it became clear that once again this
    panel was not going to be impartial. After hearing all sides, they
    announced that they were going to issue their ruling at a specified
    date. We went to the courthouse on that date in order to be present
    while they read the verdict. In a twisted version of "the dog ate
    my homework" excuse, the judges told us that they had issued the
    ruling but the computers were not cooperating and they couldn't read
    the whole statement of the verdict. My attorney asked if they could
    read the main ruling (whether they upheld the lower court's decision
    or not) and that we would pick up the full text of the ruling at a
    later date. The lead judge on the panel said that the pages were out
    of order in the document and the whole computer system was on the
    "frits". The computers seemed to be working properly for all the
    other rulings that they read before they got to ours. I have too much
    respect for kangaroos to use their name to describe this court. The
    lead judge said that we should come back in a week and they would
    read the verdict at that time. A week passed and we were notified in
    court that the panel had decided to restart the proceedings, the same
    panel that claimed that they had reached a verdict but couldn't read
    it because of issues with their computer system.

    In this next "phase" of the proceedings, the judges tried to see if
    someone would come forward and pay the amount owed to the city so that
    the matter could be "resolved" via settlement. After exhausting these
    options, the judges began with a sharp line of questioning for the
    lawyer representing the city of Yerevan. One judge actually asked,
    "Did the city sell land to Oshin? No! So why is the city asking for
    a land which it did not sell to Oshin". We were surprised that the
    judges were taking our side and it was refreshing to see them follow
    the rule of law. We have the official audio-tapes from the trial where
    the judges harshly criticize the city attorney and tell her that their
    case is without merit. They essentially say that the correct course
    of action for the city was to sue Mr. Ghulijanyan asking for monetary
    compensation for the part of the land that he no longer owned and that
    I should not have been even included in this trial. The lawyer from
    the city is heard at the end of the tape saying, "The money owed to
    the state MUST be paid and we really don't care who pays as long as
    it is paid" clearly showing the states intentions in the case (Kam
    hoghe kam poghe!). All indications were that the panel was planning
    to overturn the lower court's verdict,....until the verdict! Clearly
    there had been pressure from the highest reaches of the government
    as is the case with nearly all matters involving the people vs. the
    state or the city. In fact the judges didn't even read the verdict
    in court. The secretary gave us the ruling outside of court and said
    "Sorry, we did everything we could". The ruling basically upheld the
    verdict from the first court.

    We appealed this ruling to the highest court in the land dealing with
    such cases, the "Vechrabeg" court.

    Today, October 3, 2011, I got a formal letter from the "Vechrabeg"
    court that it had refused to even hear my case, exhausting all options
    open to me within the boundaries of the RA. In their letter of refusal,
    there is absolutely no reason given for their decision.

    In all the verdicts handed down so far in this case, none of the
    judges indicate what law I have broken during the purchase of the
    land and under which statute I must forfeit the land (because there
    are none!). Even the judges on the audio recording ask the city
    attorney "Under which statute are you asking for the forfeiture of
    Oshin's land".

    I love my country. In fact, very few have made the decision that my
    family and I have made, leaving the "good-life" in LA for a better-life
    in Yerevan. My third child was born in Yerevan, and I am proud that I
    live in my homeland and contribute to its hopefully prosperous future
    (in my own way). However, the so-called sovereign judicial system here
    has left me no choice but to seek justice outside the boundaries of
    the RA. My next stop in this journey will be the European court.

    We often here that the system is simply broken in Armenia and
    corruption runs rampant. Everything can be bought since everything is
    up for sale. Well, everyone who has worked and lived here has stories
    just like the one above, which go a long way to prove that premise.

    Oh, what would Gikor think...

    http://asbarez.com/98962/corruption-in-armenia-esti-hametsek.../




    From: A. Papazian
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