By Alexander Pracht
Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan has reimbursed approximately $19,000 to the municipal budget, his spokesperson Hayk Kostanyan reported today. The reimbursement comes after controversy surrounding Avinyan’s November business trip to Los Angeles, where taxpayer funds were used to purchase an expensive flight. Municipal regulations require a competitive bidding process for such procurement contracts, which was not followed in this case.
Back in November, the Yerevan Municipality signed an agreement with a private contractor to purchase nine airplane tickets from Yerevan to Los Angeles, with a stopover in Doha, Qatar, worth approximately $31,700, including a single business class ticket for Avinyan worth roughly $19,000, Armenian media outlet Factor reported in its investigation. The municipality used a one-source procurement procedure, meaning no competition was involved.
Avinyan claimed three weeks ago that he was unaware of the expenditures and vowed to reimburse the budget with his own money.
While many agreed that as mayor he could fly business class for official trips, the investigation sparked public outrage over the ticket’s exorbitant price and the lack of competition in the procurement process, raising concerns about possible corruption.
Meanwhile, Avinyan announced last month that his family had filed a lawsuit against CivilNet, dismissing the findings of a separate investigation published with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). This investigation details how a company belonging to Avinyan’s family indirectly benefited from a state agricultural program he oversaw as deputy prime minister.
4 Comments
Sadly, this is why many diasporans are put off from donating even a cent to Armenia, and Armenians, until they clean up their act, and act proud to be Armenian!
Armenia could be smarter, stronger, and bigger than Israel (It now IS bigger), yet Israelis stick together and advance together, not at the expense of selfishness…Sad…
When will Armenian’s and Armenian government wake up? If economy was good (stop blaming enemies- they are their own worst) everyone would want to relocate there and we would have min of 10-15million strong…
Maybe Civilnet can investigate how the Mayor was able to pay the City of Yerevan the cost of his very expensive Business Class airplane ticket to fly from Yerevan to Los Angeles.
I wonder if his salary as the Mayor of Yerevan would be enough to cover this expensive airplane ticket
so wait, the guy doesn’t have money ~$400 to file suit in Armenia and is petitioning for a fee waiver from the courts but has $19k to pay back the city…??? right.
What is the annual salary of the Mayor of Yerevan? I am guessing it is not enough to cover the approximately $19,000 that the Mayor paid to the city’s budget to cover the cost of his Business Class seat on his flight to Los Angeles from Yerevan.
Perhaps Civilnet might consider investigating how and from what source(s) he was able to acquire these funds to pay the $19,000 bill.