MAFIA IS IMMORTAL

The report of the Control Chamber generated a heated debate in the Armenian parliament. During the debate, the famous Armenian politician and member of the parliamentary faction of the Armenian National Congress, Nikol Pashinyan, said with a pinch of irony: "Of course, the Armenian public believes that the current President Serzh Sargsyan will fight corruption. We can only guess what the outcome of his fight will be, that is how much the fortune of members of his family will increase." Disagreeing with representatives of Armenia's ruling party (RPA), who claimed that "the looting in the country" began when Levon Ter-Petrosyan was in power, Pashinyan pointed out that in the 1990s, the current leader of the Republican Party of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, headed key departments meant to fight corruption - the State Department of National Security, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of National Security. As a result, his brother Aleksandr Sargsyan turned from a simple worker into a rich man, and as some allege, into a multimillionaire. Of course, the Armenian public believes that Serzh Sargsyan will fight corruption, Pashinyan said with a grin on his face. One can only guess what the outcome of this struggle will be, i.e. how much the wealth of Aleksandr Sargsyan and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Armenia to the Vatican Mikael Minasyan, who also became a millionaire, of course, "only by legal means", after becoming a member of Serzh Sargsyan's family, will increase.

The controversy is quite revealing, especially considering the fact that there is little opportunity for legitimate business in Armenia. A few weeks ago, when the main economic news in Armenia was the hail in Vedibasar, i.e. in the Ararat valley, shocking information was leaked to the press: it turned out that agricultural output in Armenia, which was hit by the hail in every sense, is twice as much as the output of the processing industry and 8 times higher than mining production.

As is well known, Armenia has little land suitable for agriculture - mountainous terrain, rocks, etc. In Soviet times, the backbone of the economy here was mountain mines and ore-dressing and metallurgical plants. And if today agriculture in Armenia is twice as bigger as local manufacturing and eight times bigger than mining, it speaks about the catastrophic state of the local economy, where there are not enough opportunities even for "patronizing".

Meanwhile, in 2010 Armenian independent analysts stated that the Armenian authorities were also "patronizing" drug trafficking. It is symbolic that the skirmish in the Armenian parliament coincided with the exposure in Azerbaijan of a group of smugglers who tried to "drag" narcotics grown ... in the occupied Azerbaijani lands - in Karabakh - through several countries, including Azerbaijan and Iran. And, according to the detainees, Armenian servicemen are involved in this business. So the Armenian authorities have something to cover up, and it is clear that the main income in this country does not come from the Tekhut copper mines: in the drug business, we should note, one invested dollar yields up to 12,000 "greenbacks" in profits. And if we are talking about drug plantations in areas beyond the control of the legal authorities and international organizations, the profits are even higher.

As the press has already pointed out many times, Armenia is ruled by the "Karabakh clan" whose "core capital" was accumulated during the war with Azerbaijan and looting of Azerbaijani villages - first in Upper Karabakh and then in Lower Karabakh. Moreover, existing as an unrecognized "quasi-state", the "Karabakh clan" just could not get its share in a legal business, no matter what it was, and established relationships and contacts with illegal businesses. The history of the Armenian jewellery industry is a vivid example. A few years ago, diamond cutting was declared almost the main hope of the local economy in Armenia. The perspectives were the most optimistic. The Armenian diaspora have extensive links and contacts in the "diamond business", and diamonds did not require large transit "markups". But it was not too long before it became clear that the Armenian "jewellers" were engaged not in cutting, per se, but at best in "laundering" illegal diamonds supplied to the market by African rebel groups and even in taking orders from terrorist organizations to transfer their assets into "stones". As a result, investors left Armenia, the industry collapsed and the optimistic hopes only turned into a hangover.

But the worst thing for Armenia is different: now the same methods are transferred to the streets of Yerevan, Gyumri, Goris, Vanadzor without any hesitation, and the situation resembles not "old Chicago" with its gangster "showdowns" but rather the infamous "village of Kutshevskaya" where mass murders in criminal showdowns revealed a link between criminals and corrupt officials, and the perpetrators were members of a gang that received protection from the authorities and operated with impunity for years.

In fact, the real power in Armenia, as well as all the more or less profitable businesses ended up in the hands of not even "criminal bosses", but rather petty criminals who suddenly experienced a taste of big money and big influence. In Armenia with its long-time tradition of political terror, some people regard the Kalashnikov assault rifle as the best way to solve all problems. On 1 March 2008, army commandos fired point-blank at participants in a rally to protest against the rigged presidential elections, and ahead of the 2013 elections, one of the presidential candidates, some Vardan Sedrakyan, "orders" an attempt on another candidate - dissident Paruyr Ayrikyan who has been known since the Soviet era.

The same methods are used for solving political, economic, property disputes of any calibre. Nobody is surprised at reports on shootings involving close relatives of mayors and governors. Gyumri Mayor Vardan Gukayan was removed from office with great difficulty after a series of shooting "incidents", but he is still believed to have kept his influence. The authorities are in no hurry to investigate the shooting in the house of Syunik Governor Suren Khachatryan, in which a candidate for mayor of Goris was killed. Ordinary Armenian citizens vote against criminal lawlessness "with their suitcases" and are just leaving the country.