Epress.am News from Armenia
Former employees of Yerevan’s idling Nairit rubber plant intend to submit to the General Prosecutor’s Office of Armenia facts of embezzlement of Nairit financial resources committed allegedly by former Armenian prime minister Tigran Sargsyan, former Nairit director Vahan Melkonyan, and late minister of energy Armen Movsisyan (died in 2015), ex-Nairit employee Karine Shahverdyan said in a conversation with Epress.am on Thursday.
“It’s the theft committed by these people that has led to the plant’s bankruptcy. This is no secret, and we have facts in our possession which we plan to submit to the prosecutor’s office,” Shahverdyan stated.
According to the former employee, Armenia’s authorities have no intentions of re-launching production at the rubber plant; “They have pursued the goal of liquidating Nairit for years, and they are currently actively promoting the implementation of their agenda. They have no desire to restart production. For 20 years, all they have done was to destroy, to ravage, and to steal. That’s all authorities are capable of.”
Shahverdyan added that despite everything, Nairit’s former employees will continue to fight for the re-launch of the plant’s production facilities.
Nairit was recognized bankrupt by a Yerevan district court late last year, in response to a claim by Armenia’s national power utility Electricity Networks of Armenia (ENA). Nairit was obliged by the court to pay a debt of over AMD 1.23 billion to the ENA in overdue electricity bills. Concurrently, Armenia’s ministry of energy infrastructures and natural resources announced a tender to re-launch the plant.