Hrant Bagratyan, a former Prime Minister and an Armenian National Congress (ANC) MP, reminded voters during the ANC election campaign in regions about the mazut case, saying that “they would backbite about us at every turn. They would say that we were stealing electricity, mazut, money, a cognac factory. If I or the president had stolen the cognac factory, could we have come to a rally today?” Today www.aravot.am tried to get an answer to this question from Galust Sahakyan, a deputy chairman of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) – it would be logical if the perpetrators were behind the bars. Do you have an answer, if they did it why weren’t they caught? He responded, “Firstly when a commission was established at the National Assembly, it made a series of revelations and I don’t remember the sums now, but large sums were returned to the state budget. After all, I don’t criticize that period because of the mazut case, I mean, one could have done his best, in order that it was carried out more moderately. That is why. Yet, certainly, all roads were closed, they would rob our trains in one place, they would rob our trucks and steal breadstuff in another.” We inquired whether they were robbed by the PANM, Mr. Sahakyan said that not by the PANM, “On the way from Georgia, in different places, at first in Azerbaijan. I criticize in terms of governance, but I am not for saying that they are people who were engaged in antinational activities. They also wanted to do many good things, some things were successful, the others not.”
We inquired whether the PANM had been engaged in total robbery, he said, “The country was totally robbed. When they privatized the land, all the agricultural equipment was sold as scrap metal immediately. All the herds of kolkhozes died within a winter. We had 7000 enterprises that turned into vouchers and were closed immediately. One could have taken not a revolutionary path at least here and could have been a good economist. However, since there were no experienced men among themselves either, not that they didn’t want, but the reality was that we had 7000 enterprises, we had had none till 1994. The majority started to rob tools and sell as scrap metal. I assert the reality. Certainly, one could be blamed for bad governance, but I don’t blame those people for disrupting the order or being antinational. It was a newly-established independence, everything was dispersed.”
We tried to get clarification whether that implied that they hadn’t appeared behind bars regarding the “mazut case,” but they had paid compensation, Mr. Sahakyan said, “The respective interim commission of the National Assembly made a huge effort to make those revelations, quite much money was returned to the state budget by different persons.” As for who, in particular, had returned that money, Mr. Sahakyan said that he didn’t remember, “Anyway, I know that it yielded results.”
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
