From 2018 to 2021 PM Pashinyan Transformed Corruption Into an Art

 

Following the Velvet Revolution’s success in ending the control, since Armenia’s independence in 1991, of three successive kleptocrat Presidents, Nikol Pashinyan was successfully coronated in May 2018 as the new ruler of Armenia-”The Savior From Planet Ijevan”.

Prior to reaching the Office of The Prime Minister of Armenia, and for well over a decade, “The Savior” Nikol crusaded against the authoritarianism of the “Old Guard”. He considered the widespread corruption in The State Bureaucracy as his archenemy. He decried and condemned systematically, the lack of accountability all former Presidents of Armenia had adopted in their irresponsible approach in draining the public treasury for personal gain.

The naive and gullible hordes of the Armenian populace bought his popular demagoguery with a blind trust, and a self-deceptive approach that refuses to acknowledge that “power corrupts”. No one insisted on the imperative that power must be wedded to strict accountability. Failure to do so, will inevitably turn noble ideas into means to hijack the popular will, by rebels ready to embrace the very behaviour they condemned in the authorities they banished to oblivion.

Nikol, The Saviour From Ijevan, while still waving the flag of “Accountability” in his public speeches, in July 2018, only a few weeks after coming to power in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, “secretly” doubled the salaries of the country’s high-level government workers. Many Ministers, their deputies, and a long list of Department Heads witnessed a salary increase from $1,600 a month to $3,100 a month.

When asked by The Media to explain why the salaries were “secretly” bumped up, by a Prime Minister who constantly held accountable the “Old Guard” and the minions of The State Bureaucracy who catered to their needs, Nikol replied: “The question you raise, as you’ve mentioned, took place through secret procedures. Hence, such information cannot be published.” All of a sudden, legitimizing the corrupt method of buying loyalty from followers (in the form of drastic salary increases), was considered a serious matter of “National Security” that cannot be the subject of public scrutiny, lest the Turkish enemy finds out what each Minister makes and offers a huge amount of money, in an attempt to entice public officials to betray their country. 

In December 2018, Nikol The Savior, approved “secretly” hefty bonuses for “Regional Governors” and the support staff they oversee, costing Armenian Taxpayers thousands of dollars that could have been used to alleviate a long list of social evils, from abject poverty to dismal school conditions in rural Armenia. Nikol, The Knight who used to crusade for “Transparency in Governance”, casually used opaque corrupt secret methods to purchase loyalty, from corrupt regional governors, at the expense of Armenian taxpayers.

In December 2019, Nikol “The Defender of Transparency” allocated a substantial amount of monetary bonuses to his own staff. When pressed relentlessly by the media to reveal the exact amount at stake, Nikol succumbed to the pressure and stated that he approved half billion Dram (500 million Dram = $ 229,000 USD) to cover the bonuses of his staff. The same ugly reality repeated itself in December 2020.

In September 2021, Nikol’s crony Alen Simonyan The Speaker of Armenia’s Parliament, with the full consent of The Prime Minister, decided to allocate a “Holiday Bonus” to all the members of The Armenian Parliament and their staffers, to highlight the importance of September 21-Armenia’s Independence Day. The Bonus of 380,000 drams ($770 USD) per MP, and each staffer he/she has, was described by MP Heriknaz Tigranyan, (from Pashinyan’s Ruling Party) as a “symbolic reward” worth roughly twice the amount of the average monthly wage in Armenia.

In a unified voice, opposition MPs condemned the move of Pashinyan’s Government, and via deputy Ishkhan Saghatelyan, senior member of the opposition Hayastan bloc, released the following statement: “At a time when the country has severe socioeconomic problems and more than 10,000 wounded and disabled persons, public officials, including National Assembly deputies, are continuing to get bonuses...In line with our campaign platform and statements, we will not benefit from these sums...We will either return them to the state budget or use them for implementing a [charity] project in Armenia’s border regions.”

In November 2021 we wrote an articles titled “PM Pashinyan & The $187.000 USD Car For His Crony Alen Simonyan”

https://artsakhtheinadequateresponse.blogspot.com/2021/11/pm-pashinyan-187000-usd-car-for-his.html

Basically, Nikol offered his buddy Alen Simonyan a BMW with a price tag of $187,000 for the invaluable services provided by The National Assembly Speaker (AS) to The Republic of Armenia, at a time when hundreds of Armenian villages, three decades after independence, have no clean running water, paved roads, or adequate heating systems to cope with the harsh winter conditions in the mountainous regions of Armenia. 

Less than a month after the BMW fiasco, Nikol endorsed a hefty “Christmas Holiday Bonus” (the equivalent of a full monthly salary) to reward his two deputies and all members of his staff, for the selfless and endless sacrifices endured in the process of serving the citizens of Armenia.

The Prime Minister’s Office admitted that “479 officials has received bonuses equivalent to their monthly salary. The payout cost taxpayers 97.5 million drams ($203,000 USD) in total.”

After the release of the cost shouldered by Armenian taxpayers for the “Christmas Holiday Bonus” plan, several Ministers admitted that, with the unreserved consent of Nikol, they generously rewarded subordinates for their dedication to the collective well being of Armenia, but refused to release the figures attached to the largess of the Pashinyan Government vis-à-vis key senior officials running a variety of Ministries.

Nikol, the great crusader for transparency, was very comfortable with the fact that the bonuses distributed to purchase loyalties were tightly shrouded in secrecy. The reason is very simple: as a Prime Minister you don’t want to taint the reputation of your bureaucracy with the accusation that the old dirty tricks, used by the previous Presidents of Armenia, have been legalized and whitewashed with “BONUSES”-the new substitute for “Greasing Pockets” (discreetly sliding money into someone’s pocket) and buying the blind loyalty of corrupt lackeys. 

 

 

 What was the average Armenian worker getting, when cronies of Pashinyan were enjoying salary raises from $1,600 to $3,100 and rejoicing while spending generous Christmas Bonuses?

According to a report released by The Armenian State Revenue Committee (SRC), in the final week of 2021, the average 2021 monthly salary in the country was 214,000 drams ($446), up from 203,000 drams ($422) in 2020. I can’t even find the proper words to describe the golden heart and charitable approach PM Pashinyan adopted to reward the average salaried Armenian worker after a full year of hard work ($24). I hope you noticed the close parity between the increase of salaries bestowed on Pashinyan’s cronies (from $1,600 to $3,100) and the increase associated with the salary of the Armenian who has no ties to the inner circle of Nikol (from $422 to $446).

Last but not least, many readers expressed the concern that we used a questionable source to claim that the Net Worth (NW) of Nikol Pashinyan is $3.7 billion USD. The NW issue was covered in an article titled “PM Pashinyan Caroling The Virtues of Democracy”

https://artsakhtheinadequateresponse.blogspot.com/2021/12/pm-pashinyan-caroling-virtues-of.html

We did clearly acknowledge in the article the possibility that the figures might be inaccurate, and we reproduce, one more time, the following segment from the original article, to reiterate to our readers that we do not claim to have any form of privileged or surreptitious access to the bank account/s of PM Pashinyan or his wife Anna Hakobyan:

“[Nikol] There is a possibility that the figures are not accurate, and I am absolutely convinced that a bank account in your own name does not exist, anywhere on the face of the earth, with an amount of $3.7 billion USD. So to put an end to this controversy, are you predisposed to retain the services of a group of forensic accountants who were involved in the “Panama Papers” scandal to review the books of all the charities controlled by your wife Mrs. Anna Hakobyan?”

So far, we have not received a letter from The Office of The Prime Minister of Armenia advising us that Nikol and Anna are willing to open the books, of all the charities controlled by Anna, for a full analysis by “Forensic Accountants” who worked with The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an organization closely involved in the struggle against corrupt leaders associated with the “Panama Papers”.

In other words, we do not have to prove the accuracy of the figures we are circulating. A forensic review will reveal how close the final figures are to our claim. Since PM Pashinyan build his political career on an unwavering dedication to transparency and accountability, it is up to Nikol to invite ICIJ and its forensic accountants for a full review of all the revenues linked to Ms. Hakobyan’s charities.

This article can be republished, online and in print, without any permission from the author as long as the following conditions are respected:

1) The reproduction is not for commercial purposes.

2) Do not edit the text.

3) Give proper credit to the blog by acknowledging the source and creating a hyperlink.