Tracing the Lost Millions in the Construction of Schools

At the RA Government session on 18 September 2014, the Chairman of the RA Control Chamber Ishkhan Zakaryan announced that he had carried out inspections in the sphere of the school building project. The CC was not pleased by the results. According to Ishkhan Zakaryan 22 bln AMD has been spent on the construction of 74 schools in the period of 2006-2013, but none of those constructions has been finished yet. Mr. Zakaryan even brought an example: “During 2006-2013 we have allocated nearly 270 mln from overall planned 574mln AMD to the school #5 of Gavar.” Reporting about the inspections of the Chamber Ishkhan Zakaryan noticed that the Government did not pay due attention to the problems of seismic stability of schools.

They have a website, follow and you will know․

D5C87F56-9073-4EE4-96A3-49569D7FA54F_mw1024_n_sMr Zakaryan was drastic and incriminatory in his announcements. It seemed like the steps of CC would also be drastic.
According to Article 8 of the Law on the RA Control Chamber, by the decision of the council of Control Chamber, the Control Chamber may send the protocols compiled during the controls and current reports to the General Prosecutor’s Office of the RA, if they include suspects on the penal legal violations. Was any protocol on the school building sent to the General Prosecutor’s Office? What was the total sum of money of the recorded inefficient work? What did the analysis show? Were there corruption risks in the sphere of construction mentioned above? Iravaban.net tried to find the answers to this question from the chamber. To sum up, it seemed like the response will be thick and versatile, but the Control Chamber’s answer to all our questions was short “All the reports are published on the website, follow and you will know”.
The General Prosecutor’s Office has not waited for the updates of the website

դատախազություն-1-440x330We also applied to the General Prosecutor’s Office as well. They clarified that based on the report compiled according to the results of the control implemented referring the construction and reconstruction of the cultural, educational and sports objects, reconstruction of the vocational educational institutions, special educational objects and by the record confirmed by the #10/4 decision of the CC Council, the RA CC recorded that 11 objects had been checked. The contractual funds amounted to 878.4 mln AMD; Constructional works in the sum of 407,9mln AMD was passed through a measuring control.:

The total amount of money of inefficient works found in the 11 checked objects was 4,982,160 AMD.

In the majority of checked objects the violation referred only to the acceptation of constructional norms and quality of implementation of the constructional work.

Payments for not implemented work in the checked objects were not recorded.

In order to make a detailed study of the violations recorded in the preliminary investigation of the criminal case, the RA CC requested the interim  protocols, serving as a basis for current records, made by the employees of CC and the documents on which they were based.

IMG_9724 qnchakan komiteIt was reported that the preliminary investigation was in process and was carried out by the RA Investigative Committee.

We also applied to the Ministry of Urban Development. The first paragraph of the Ministry’s response started with contradiction as compared with the statement of CC Chairman. Within the framework of the state budget allocated to the RA Ministry of Urban Development during 2006-2013, more than 74 constructional objects were foreseen. A part of it had been put into operation during the last years; the other part is in the process of commissioning.”

The Ministry is also being reminded that the RA Ministry of Urban Development had ordered the construction, but from 2011 the authorizations of the client was conducted by the state “Office of implementation of urban development projects” of the RA Ministry of Urban Development.

According to the letter, from 74 objects, which construction began in 2006-2009, only 13 were commissioned completely in 2013. 25 constructional objects were put into partial operation. According to the Ministry, 13 constructional objects should have been put into operation in 2014. 10 objects will be put into operation in 2015, 2 objects in 2016.

Referring to seismic stability the letter says that it has been decided to make restrictions in 26 objects. A part of it is being carried out at the moment; the other part will be done in the period of 2016-2018.

Who was called to liability?

IMG_2871 copy (2)The Ministry of Urban Development also informed that criminal cases were initiated for the violations of constructional work recorded in the National Library of Armenia, school #5 of Masis City of Ararat Marz and the school of Mets Mantash village of Shirak Marz.

In 2012-2013 as a result of violations of contract responsibilities nearly 33 contracts have been dissolved – 2 contracts of elaboration of the project cost estimate document, 13 contracts of implementation of construction works, 14 contracts of implementation of technical control service and 4 contracts of implementation of author’s control service.

As a result of the dissolution of the contracts mentioned above and by enacting the insurance of contract implementation (agreement on fine and bank guarantee) 37,212, 0 AMD has been levied.

According to the letter 89, 774, 5 AMD has been levied from 112 organizations in 2012-2013 on the basis of violating the responsibilities.

Գևորգ Թոսունյան

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