How it was revealed that Mihran Poghosyan is in the Panama Offshore
A German newspaper has received a stack of outflowed documents about the businesses registered in Panama and other offshore zones, and since this newspaper did not have the ability to organize international investigations, it has 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 the 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 and 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. To the question as to why Mihran Poghosyan has registered under his name knowing very well that he may become a subject of scandal, Kristine Aghalaryan said that Mihran Poghosyan has never thought that these documents will be deciphered and there will be an outflow, “The information about your share is a secret, Mihran had this certificate and knew that his name would never appear in the registration documents as his name was nowhere but since the flow of the documents was from the business registering organization, these documents were also revealed and we got Mihran Poghosyan’s certificate.”
According to the journalist, the officials must be very vigilant because no matter how smart they behave, anyway, there is a risk as we are living in the era of Internet. Investigating Mihran Poghosyan’ businesses, the journalist of “Hetq” has signed a commitment that she will not publish the decrypted material until the deadline, which is defined for the online journalists, “There are even defined deadlines about when you can send an inquiry to an official whether you can receive an explanation from him and so on, all these are rules that are laid down for everyone. If I had sent the inquiry a day earlier, I would have broken these rules.” And as to what new scandalous information are going to be disclosed and which officials and names of persons with criminal record are going to be published whose businesses is registered in offshore will be known on May 9, – said Kristine Aghalaryan.
According to her, the list will be open and everyone can use it. Khachik Harutyunyan, an expert of “Transparency International” Anti-Corruption Center, spoke about the offshore registration and widespread schemes of money laundering. According to him, there are 4 important advantages to be registered in offshore: low taxes, highly simplified registration of the company, total privacy and weak control. Note that it is impossible to receive any information about a company registered in offshore even by the court. According to Mr. Harutyunyan, as a rule, people who intend to remain anonymity go to offshore.
Lusine BUDAGHYAN “Aravot” daily
