Epress.am News from Armenia
In one month, owner of Le Café de Paris Ashkhen Valérie Gordzounian will come to Armenia in order to sell her cafe and return to France, the owner of the Yerevan-based cafe, who is currently in Paris, told Epress.am.
Gordzounian expressed her indignation at a recent statement by RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan in an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service in which he said that the issues tied to Le Café de Paris are being saddled on the state, and in cases of tax evasion, the state must stand its ground. “And no political pressure, public pressure or attempts at causing misunderstanding among the public should have an effect on it,” he said.
The cafe owner, however, asserts that the charges of tax evasion are false, citing the 80 million drams (approx. $207,200 USD) in taxes she paid in Sept. 2010.
“Yes, I paid my taxes, and I’m not leaving Armenia because everything is good, or I have so much money that I’m fleeing. They wrote the deed after which I asked to be allowed to pay the added 0.15% gradually. I went to see head of the Presidential Oversight Service Hovhannes Hovsepyan: he told me, wait, I will tell you, and he did nothing; he didn’t even call. Then I wrote a letter to the prime minister — he did the same thing. Meanwhile, the amount of this deed was increasing. When I saw that it was hopeless, I was forced to sell 50% of my factory in order to pay the 80 million, and I paid it in Sept. 2010,” she said.
“What were they saying, that I came to steal from my country? Instead, I could’ve stayed much more comfortably in Paris. And today my property would’ve been greater. What did the state do? It seems to me that it would be better for them if I left; perhaps I talk too much or I’m in the way, but during [the] Karabakh [War], I wasn’t in the way or when they came to France…,” she continued.
Gordzounian is also indignant toward Diaspora Minister Hranush Hakobyan, who “not even once took an interest in this matter.”