Epress.am News from Armenia
Prominent Armenian civic activist, engineer Vardges Gaspari turned up today outside the government offices in Yerevan to protest against the Zvartnots airport customs house refusal to issue his VAL Automation company export permits. The demonstrator held up posters including some reading, “[Prime minister] K. Karapetyan, one does not run an economy by playing drums” and “Godfather of plain looting.”
Speaking to an Epress.am reporter on the scene, Gaspari complained that the head of the customs house has been demanding that he entrepreneur presents expert conclusions which would show that the products he intends to export to Georgia – nodes, voltage measuring devices, and thermostats – are not military or dual-use goods, which, according to Gaspari, “is plain looting.”
“These are ordinary items produced by millions all over the world. I have even been told by the National Security Service that I needed a NSS permit to import a TV remote control ‘because it is a remote control device.’ Karen Karapetyan, the so-called economic genius, is the real godfather of Eurasian Economic Union. [President] Serzh [Sargsyan] is irrelevant; he can get trampled on and pressured into forgetting about ongoing negotiations with the European Union and announce, out of the blue, that we are entering the Eurasian Union. But this one, who thinks he is so very talented and intelligent, believes he can get away with taking the people for idiots. But he is a simple nitwit and the godfather of this plain looting,” the demonstrator said.
As Gaspari stood outside Karapetyan’s office, two policemen approached him and demanded that the demonstrator put down the posters, arguing that “it’s not permitted.” Having been left ignored by the protester, the two officers left the area, only two return minutes later and forcibly take away Gaspari’s posters.