A German newspaper has received a stack of outflowing documents about the businesses registered in Panama and other offshore zones and since this newspaper did not have the ability to organize an international investigations, it submitted these documents to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This was told by Kristine Aghalaryan, a journalist for “Hetq” online newspaper, today, during the discussion on “What Should the Journalist Know When Writing About the Offshore and Offshore transactions” organized at the center of Media Initiatives. Kristine Aghalaryan is the co-author of “Armenia’s Chief Compulsory Enforcement Officer’s Offshore Companies and Swiss Bank Accounts”. Kristine Aghalaryan told how she discovered that Mihran Poghosyan is in Panama Offshore.
According to her, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists receiving the information of the German newspaper organized the coordination of this investigation, which was attended by more than 400 journalists from more than 70 countries. “An online editorial is established that functions only online but works cooperates every second and every minute and this cooperation is very effective, all the documents available on the network are accessible to all journalists who are involved in the network. The investigation was conducted by “Hetq” from Armenia. “If I needed, let’s say, information about a company in Lithuania or about an Armenian official, the Lithuanian journalists were helping me and vice versa, so to speak, it was a global editorial,” said Kristine Aghalaryan.
In reviewing the list, the most obvious thing in the document that caught the attention was Mihran Poghosyan’s name. Incidentally, when the “Hetq” reporter in the end of the investigation has made an inquiry to Armenia’s Chief Compulsory Enforcement Officer, Mihran Poghosyan, a response came from his department that Mihran Poghosyan has no connection with the mentioned offshore registered companies. According to decrypted documents, the RA Chief Enforcer is a shareholder of three companies registered in Panama: Sigtem Real Estates Incorporated, Hopkinten Trading Incorporated, and BANGIO INVEST S.A.
To the question of Aravot.am of how they determined that the matter is about the same Mihran Poghosyan rather than any other citizen of Armenia named Mihran Poghosyan, Kristine Aghalaryan said that the document contained Mihran Poghosyan passport copy, a certificate, home address and all the necessary and confirming documents. Kristine Aghalaryan said that if our law enforcement agencies who are currently engaged in this affair do not dismiss because of the lack of corpus delicti and do not demand evidence, then they will apply to ICIJ, which is the carrier of these documents and will receive from this organization. And as to what new scandalous information will be revealed and which officials’ names with criminal records will be published, whose businesses are registered in offshore, will be known on May 9, – said Kristine Aghalaryan.
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
