Friday, May 6 2016 08:34

The officials of various Armenian structures, including the security ones, considerably increase their personal income due to the growing number of official cars.  

According to ArmInfo's source in one of the security structures of Armenia, the key beneficiaries of the "odometric" swindle are the state officials. "Such a situation in our structure has been observed for years.  But now that our soldiers on the frontline are deprived of the most primitive personal hygiene means, it is no longer possible to keep silence," the source says on condition of anonymity.       

Under such an unsophisticated scheme, the officials and generals take huge budget sums for the petroleum, which is never used, and for technical maintenance, which is never conducted. The final act of the swindle of some high-ranking officials is the sale of an almost new car with a drive of allegedly several hundred thousand kilometers by "public" auction to a relative or a stalking horse for a few thousand dollars. After that, the structure acquires a new car at the expense of public funds and the scheme is repeated once again.             

By ArmInfo's information, some ministries regularly send the official cars for "a software update" of the drive. The Armenian brains of programming spend a minute on increasing the drive by up to 50,000  km.  The officials of the Armenian Defense Ministry also work under that scheme, however, their appetites are not so big. The drive of the Ministry's official cars worth hundreds of thousand USD is increased by 5000, 10000 or 15000 km at one go. Sometimes it happens twice a month.    
To note, many handymen in Yerevan can change the odometer data. Moreover, one has to have a pull to do so, given that such activities are illegal and criminally liable in many countries.      

Given that the changes of the odometer data are registered nowhere, it is impossible to learn the precise number of official cars involved in such fraud. One can only say that there are 1,072 official cars in Armenia and the annual damage from such a fraud amounts to billions of drams.