Тhe criminal proceedings investigated in the Anti-Corruption Committee of the Republic of Armenia, established that in June 2023, a public procurement contract was concluded between the Ministry of Defense and a contracting company for implementation of construction works in the N-th military unit of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, within the framework of which the construction works were performed incompletely, and for some works, low-quality materials with the cost 3 times lower than planned were used. Under such conditions, the director of the contracting company, with the intent to fraudulently steal the property of the Ministry of Defense on an especially large scale, together with his close person - the director of the organization carrying out technical supervision of the construction works, drew up reports containing data on the works that were not actually performed, and also concealed the fact of the works being performed with low-cost materials. As a result, AMD 81,176,000 was fraudulently embezzled from the budget of the Ministry of Defense.
Afterwards, in exchange for accepting incomplete works and issuing positive conclusions, the official of the Ministry of Defense demanded a bribe in an especially large amount of AMD 10,000,000 from the director of the contracting company, part of which he received.
The preliminary investigation also revealed that in July 2024, another public procurement contract was concluded between the Ministry of Defense and the same contracting company, within the framework of which the director of the company gave a bribe in the total amount of AMD 2,100,000 to two officials of the Ministry of Defense in exchange for ignoring possible shortcomings in the performance of the construction works and issuing positive conclusions on the results of the contract. Moreover, in order to participate in the said procurement tender and be recognized as the winner, while violating the procurement procedures, the directors of the two above-mentioned companies paid an illegal reward to a former employee of the Ministry of Defense. As a result, the legitimate interests of other organizations that submitted applications for participation in the procurement suffered particularly large property damage.
In addition, it was established that in June 2025, representatives of the aforementioned companies bribed another official of the Ministry of Defense in order to obtain a reference of the desired content from the latter.
Seven persons, including officials of the Ministry of Defense and directors of limited liability companies, were charged with multiple episodes of bribery, abuse of office, embezzlement in an especially large amount, as well as with committing criminal acts provided for by a number of other articles of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia. Home arrest was applied as a measure of restriction against them, and arrest was applied against one of the officials of the Ministry of Defense.
The preliminary investigation of the criminal proceedings has been completed, and the materials of the proceedings with the indictment have been sent to the Anti-Corruption Court of the Republic of Armenia.
Notification. the person accused of a crime is considered innocent until his guilt is proven in accordance with the procedure established by the RA Criminal Procedure Code by a verdict entered into legal force.
