As RFE/RL’s Press Review quotes Gagik Tsarukian (AKA Dodi Gago) as boasting of “attracting” 200,000 members to his Prosperous Armenia political party to date, Hetq Online highlights some more of the illegalities that have accompanied the acquisition of obscene wealth by Armenia’s richest man. Of course, some analysts suggest that Tsarukian is merely a front for certain high-level officials, but nobody really knows. However, Tsarukian does always manage to get everything his own way.

According to a June 22, 2006 Government Decision, 1,177 square meters of land at the intersection of Abovyan and Tumanyan Streets out of a 1,415 square meter plot belonging to the State Committee of Sport was allocated free of charge to the Armenia’s Oligarch Number One, member of parliament, president of the Multi Group Concern, president of the National Olympic Committee of Armenia, and founder of the Prosperous Armenia political party, Gagik Tsarukyan.

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Another is on Abovyan Street and a third, as indicated in the June 22nd government decision, shares an address with the Sport Committee. This building is nearly complete. The fact that the government decision was issued only on June 22, 2006 means that the construction was being carried out illegally until very recently.

The Armenian authorities have a special attitude toward this oligarch. All his businesses have been handed over to him with great care so as to spare him any unnecessary expenses.

Remember, for example, how he acquired the Yerevan Wine and Cognac Factory. A foreign company had expressed readiness to pay $7 million for the factory, but the Diaspora-Armenian owners of the factory had to sell it to Tsarukyan for $800,000.

The taxation agencies avoid disturbing this businessman. According to our calculations, the Tsarukyan-owned Ararat Cement Factory conducts 50 percent of its business in the shadows.

This is the “prosperous future” for the Republic of Armenia that the leader of Prosperous Armenia, Gagik Tsarukyan, envisions.

There’s more on Gagik Tsarukian via links to other stories on Hetq Online here, and there’s always Vahan Ishkhanyan’s article on the man himself as part of a larger and very revealing look at the economic powers that be. For more on Prosperous Armenia, however, take a look at Edik’s article here.

Piles of passports like these can be seen in various photo shops throughout Yerevan, passports of those citizens of Armenia who have agreed to join the political party Prosperous Armenia . The heads of local chapters collect the passports in exchange for promises of well-being to their fellow citizens, and employment to the unemployed. This activity is personally supervised by two party leaders who also happen to public officials, Chairman of the State Committee on Physical Fitness and Sport Ishkhan Zakaryan and by Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications Vardan Vardanyan. Which means that we as taxpayers are paying these men their salaries to work for Prosperous Armenia instead of performing their official duties.

Rather than bringing citizens one-by-one to the photo shops, the heads of the local chapters of Prosperous Armenia collect their passports and place orders with the photo-shops to make two copies of each passport picture, which they then attach to the registration cards of the newly recruited party-members. For local party bosses who recruit the most people, there are financial rewards and higher ratings within the party.

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According to our information, Prosperous Armenia has 43 local chapters in Yerevan, each with its own office and at least three employees, who since April 2006 have been paid a monthly salary of $100. This means that the party has created 129 jobs in Yerevan alone. But these employees are not registered and don’t pay any taxes. The money that pays their salaries must come from Tsarukyan’s shadow business; otherwise he would have published the reports and would not be concealing his employees.

Prosperous Armenia has published its program in the press. But when you look at the party’s financial activity it becomes clear that its program provisions have nothing to do with reality. No laws exist for Gagik Tsarukyan. No one from any state agency can go to the party headquarters and say that certain laws are being violated. One thing that Armenian oligarchs know for sure is that money determines the law.

What the owners of all these passports fail to grasp is that all the handouts from the oligarchs are at the expense of unpaid taxes. But the taxes are supposed to support hospitals, schools, the army, pensioners. These taxes are supposed to pay the salary of the president of the republic as well. By handing over their passports, these citizens of Armenia are becoming unwitting accomplices to tax evasion and lawlessness.

Lovely, and nobody gives a damn.