The Department of State Interests Protection of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Armenia has examined the documents of the financial and economic activity of the companies “Sevan Trout Restoration and Fisheries Development Fund” and CJSC companies “Sevan Trout” and “Sevan Aqua” established by the RA State Supervision Service.

The study revealed that for the purpose of fulfilling the statutory goals of the Foundation and the companies in 2013-2018. About 9 billion drams has been allocated from the state budget of the Republic of Armenia, some of which have been stolen or misappropriated or wasted through various transactions and schemes, or through misappropriation and waste.

Particularly, according to the contract signed by "Sevan Trout" CJSC 200.000 items small fish with about 180 million drams for 2015, which was though delivered in November 2011, but remained at the place of supply, Gyumri, because the farm was not ready for operation.

As a result, a maintenance contract was signed with the supplier LLC and the latter was paid extra 151.2 million drams, and only 99,772 survived from 200,000 fish with 13,896 drams per kg of small fish instead of the 5,000 AMD envisaged by the parties of the contract.

Besides, during 2014-2017 comparing the tax invoices, transportation documents, sheets of transportation means, the inlet and outlet registration books of the provider regarding the small fish, it was found that waybill for 68.3 million drams, and information on small fish with the cost of 273.1 million drams were not available and according to accounting documents, the number of small fish is transferred to the fish-breeding cage nets at 32612 kg weight (291.9 million drams) is more than the quantities provided by the Acts of Delivery and Acceptance transferred to the fish-breeding cage nets situated 8 km far from the shore.

In 2016 an agreement was signed between “Sevan Aqua” CJSC and a Ukraine company for building a catamaran that will cost 319 000 UDS (154.7 million drams) though the purchase procedure was approved according to the bidding document and in the result, payments were made without acceptance of the goods. Besides, the contractual price of the agreement became 470 thousand has become 470 thousand USD, and the delivery period has been extended three times, from 180 days to 555 days and the deadline was stipulated 17.03.2019.

It turned out that the Ukrainian company was unfoundedly paid 110,000 thousand USD (53.3 million drams) for changes of Specification and lowering the catamarans into water and transporting it to the RA, while the supplier had to cover the above mentioned costs within the total contract price.

Besides, as the company paid 234 million drams to the Ukrainian company, the catamaran was not moved to the territory of Armenia on 17.03.2019, and any means was not undertaken by the employees of the CJSC for either recovering the money or actually receiving the catamaran.

It was also found out that on April 2017 “Sevan Aqua” CJSC lost 425 million drams in biological assets (fish escape) and 97 million drams in fixed assets (pantone and cage details) because of the damage to the fish-breeding nets.

According to the information provided by the CJSC, during the winter months Lake Sevan has been frozen, due to strong winds due to the movement of the ice sheet, the cage nets have been damaged and a massive escape of fish has occurred. Meanwhile, lake freezing in the field of fish-breeding cage nets is considered a foreseeable risk, and there were clear guidelines and sequence of actions in case of freezing in the “Engineering and technical description of the equipment and property for fish-breeding cage nets of the Lake Sevan trout. However, the responsible persons of the CJSC had not undertaken appropriate measures.

It was also found out that more than 733 million drams was spent on the construction of a recycling plant in the Karchaghbyur community according to an agreement signed between "Sevan trout" CJSC and another company. However, the works have not been completed yet, and the factory building is in semi-built condition since 2016 and has not been used for any purpose.

According to the decision of "Sevan trout" CJSC Council, “Pepo” snack shop has been founded and from November 2015 to March 2017 operated on Saryan street, Yerevan city as a part of the advertising campaign, and 129.6 million drams was spent on it. Though, only 32.3 million drams of income was accounted during the whole period of operation.

Other criminal abuses have also been founded out. In general, the materials received from the RA State Supervision Service contain data from the responsible officials of “Sevan Trout” and “Sevan Aqua” CJSCs for acting contrary to the interests of the company, for the benefit of themselves or others, for documents falsification, wasting or stealing large amounts of funds of over 1 billion drams trusted them, causing losses and damages of about 1.3 billion drams during 2014-2019.

Taking into account the aforementioned, a criminal case has been initiated in connection with the abovementioned facts in Department of State Interests Protection of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Armenia in accordance with Article 179, Part 3, Point 1, Article 214, Part 2, and Article 325, Section 2. with part attributes.

The preliminary investigation of the criminal case has been assigned to the RA Investigation Committee.

Notice: Every person suspected in or charged with a criminal offense shall be presumed innocent unless proved guilty in the manner prescribed by the RA Criminal Procedure Code and unless the verdict comes into legal force.