Gyumri Police Try Scare Tactics to Prevent Further Protests by Car Owners

Armenian drivers of cars with Georgian plates today planned to organize a protest march with their cars; however, police vehicles were crawling the streets and officers were either frightening drivers of cars with Georgian plates or outright impounding their cars.

As told to Epress.am by protestors Vahagn Khachatryan and Karen Poghosyan, all this is being done to hinder their march today. They said officers were taking drivers to the police station, only to release them after a period of time. Poghosyan added that police were urging protesting drivers “to write a letter, be good, wait and don’t protest.”

According to Khachatryan, police were filming people yesterday and were impounding those cars today that belonged to drivers who participated in yesterday’s protest.

Recall, local car owners in Gyumri have been protesting for a few days now against the abolition of a legal loophole that has allowed them to pay significantly lower import taxes.

Under the existing Armenian legislation, a car owner has to pay customs and value-added taxes worth 32 percent of the market value of their imported vehicle in order to obtain license plates. Cars registered abroad have until now qualified as “temporary imports” and been exempted from these duties, reports RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun radio).

Many Armenians have for years made use of this loophole by registering their cars with road police in Georgia, where import tax rates are considerably lower than in Armenia. The Armenian government abolished the “temporary import” arrangement in Aug. The decision meant that the owners of such cars had to register them with the Armenian road police and pay hefty taxes by Feb. 5.