THE "GOOD" SHEPHERDS

After the "bomb" called Wikileaks exploded in the world's media, the creator of the website, Julian Assange, promised that after the series of "leaks" from the US State Department it would turn to the banks.  There is much of interest there, too.

Julian Assange today remains "locked" in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and is hardly in a position to organize a new whistle-blowing campaign. But even though he is not around banking scandals are erupting in the media. An article published on the website of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) says that covert accounts were offered by the Swiss branch of HSBC bank to criminals, including drug traffickers and arms dealers, and clients were also given help in tax evasion. Bank documents from 2005 to 2007, which have come into journalists' hands, contain information about 30,000 accounts, with assets amounting to about 120bn dollars. According to the survey, it was the Venezuelan government that kept the highest amount in the bank - about 12.6bn dollars.

Confidential information was provided to Le Monde newspaper and ICIJ Christine Lagarde, who at the time served as French Minister of Finance. The documents were handed to Lagarde by a former employee of HSBC, Herve Falchiani, who stole five data CDs when he was fired, the Rosblat agency points out.

It is a sad story, indeed. Although HSBC is one of the largest financial conglomerates in the world and its branch network has more than 6,900 offices in 84 countries, scandals linked with this bank flare up with frightening regularity. In November 2014 Belgian investigating authorities launched an investigation into the activities of the Swiss branch of the credit institution HSBC Private Bank. A year earlier, the Argentine authorities also accused the bank of assisting individuals to launder money and evade taxes. And in 2012, the HSBC Bank, which is accused in the US of illegal financial transactions, agreed to pay the US government 1.9bn dollars after providing evidence that the organization had laundered the money of Mexican drug traffickers.

Now this new scandal and the bank is faced with an unpleasant choice. On the one hand, no-one has retracted the bank secret. On the other, being shown up as a "money launderer" is clearly not part of HSBC's plans. The bank's London headquarters said that HSBC accepts its guilt and assumes responsibility for the wrongdoing of its Swiss branch. They said the Geneva office had not been fully integrated into the credit organization's system. A spokesman for the bank also pointed out that HSBC had undergone a "radical transformation" since 2007 and had launched several initiatives "guaranteeing its services would not be used for tax evasion or money laundering". The law-enforcement bodies of a number of European countries have said that the information leak has helped them obtain information about billions of dollars of unpaid taxes.

Journalists, too, are studying the list with no less enthusiasm. And it was the mass media that reported that the bank's Swiss office also has Armenian clients. From 1989 to 2006 15.4bn dollars was kept in 23 bank accounts of Armenian clients of HSBC's Swiss branch, Radio Azatunyun reports. Four of the ten clients are linked with Armenia, or are either ethnic Armenians or have Armenian citizenship. But what was most significant was that, according to the HSBC documents, the Catholicos of all Armenians Garegin II has an account in HSBC's Swiss office. This account was opened in 2000 in the name of His Holiness Garegin II Nerses. In 2006-2007 there were about 1.1bn dollars in his account. The information about him opens with a photograph of the Catholicos. 

Echmiadzin rushed to explain. The Catholicos' press secretary, Vagram Melikyan, said that Echmiadzin's accounts have always been registered in the name of Catholicoses, and the fact that the account in HSBC is registered in the name of Garegin II is nothing strange. And in his letter of reply to the inquiry by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists the Catholicos of all Armenians provided the required explanations which have been partially posted on the consortium's website. According to Melikyan, the account was opened for the requirements of the church and its charities and it was transferred to Catholicos Garegin II upon the death of his predecessor to be used for the same purposes. Generally speaking, the patriarchy is a national religious institution and is not liable to taxation, and his Holiness is immune in matters of payment of any taxes. So it was under Vazgen I, Garegin I and Garegin II.

Frankly speaking, Vagram Melikyan's "explanation" begs even more questions. First: why did a patriarchy, which is situated in Armenia in the small town of Echmiadzin, have to open an account in the Swiss office of HSBC? And why was this account, in point of fact, secret?

But we know something else, too. Yerevan and Echmiadzin prefer to keep quiet about this, but the Armenian Apostolic Church is acting as a consolidating force of the Armenian foreign diaspora. It is the church parishes in many countries that are responsible, for example, for the collection of "tribute money" - a kind of "unofficial tax" for the "Armenian cause". And this tax, we should add, is by no means everything and is not always paid voluntarily. And so "church-mafia" scandals break out among the Armenian diaspora, like the one in the summer of 2010 in Nice where a local parish priest - Father Vache, secular name Vache Ayrapetyan - became the subject of a serious scandal linked with a cult association and the parish council in the local church community. The root of the conflict was in the standard charter where all power in the community (and the right to control donations) lies with the priest. In their statement to the Nouvelles d'Armenie newspaper, the members of the parish council described how this war was being waged: "Sunday after Sunday, ceremony after ceremony a group of very brutal people, led by Father Vache, gradually occupied the church and the candle-lighting area, becoming sole masters of the place and infiltrating the entrance to the church on the priest's instructions and even closing off access to the church for the chairman of the cult association through intimidation and all kinds of threats." They said "the terror reached its peak on 21 March 2010, the day of the general meeting. Despite an imposing police presence and two bailiffs, there was an incredible outburst of violence and an attack on the son of the school chairman, Barsamyan, who was injured and had to have two operations.  Chairs and table flew in all directions around the room. Father Vache's group abused and threatened everyone, regardless of age or sex. Women were abused with terrible swearing… For safety reasons the general meeting was cancelled".

This is just one example of the kind of acute struggle that is going on in Armenian parishes for control over these "donations", not to mention the very tense relations that exist between the Echmiadzin Catholicosate and the "Great House of Cilicia" - an "alternative" spiritual centre created during the "Cold War". The exposure of the investigative journalists could uncover much of what the Armenian clerics do not wish to see published.

And the most distasteful thing is that this scandal has broken out in the run-up to the centenary of the "genocide of the Armenians", when a plan of measures is already being drawn up in which the church is due to play a leading role and present itself as some kind of "good spiritual shepherds"… In this context the name of Catholicos Garegin II in the list of owners of scandalous bank accounts has become singularly inappropriate, reminding one of the darker side of the life of the Armenian Apostolic Church.