Larisa Paremouzyan, Qristine Aghalaryan, www. hetq.am
'Forests in Armenia are not subject to sale, nevertheless, 'Teghout' CJSC has purchases dozen hectares of forest at a price of 357.000-225.000 AMD per hectare with forged documents in different years. We are demanding to annul all these fake transactions,' 200 Shnogh residents are currently demanding in writing from the National Assembly.
Shnogh residents claim that Chairman of 'Vallex' Company Group V. Mejlumyan has become the owner of several hectares of forests in Shnogh.
Shnogh Village Municipality has also sold the forest areas adjacent to the orchards owned by Shnogh resident Lyova Alikhanyan. The latter has found out that 'Teghout' CJSC has entered into a transaction with Shnogh ex Community Head Haykaz Qochinyan illegally purchased 35.5 ha of rural forests from the village municipality with the formulation of 'not-used other land areas of agricultural land areas' from the community-owned land areas located in the administrative area of Shnogh.
'You can see this mulberry tree: there used to a forest behind it. This forest was coded under 300-049, it's 5 ha and 714 meters of used area. This forest has been purchased by 'Teghout' CJSC in the auction. The area of 35 ha and 506 meters on your list has been completely purchased. Under the law, the sale and purchase has been held between Shnogh Rural Municipality and Teghout CJSC. There was an announcement published in the Republic of Armenia and it was mapped,' L. Alikhanyan explained.
Under him, the surface of the forests privatized by Valeri Mejlumyan hasn't been mentioned in their letter addressed to the National Assembly so as the prosecutor's office and criminal investigation bodies won't come and say that's the volume. We know only about 35.5 ha privatized by him, but there is much more we don't know,' L. Alikhanyan said.
The transaction of sale and purchase of these forest areas has been carried out by Shnogh Ex Village Head Haykaz Qochinyan and Ex-Director of 'Teghout' CJSC Ruben Papoyan.
In reply to the question why the village forests have been purchased from Shnogh Village Municipality under the name of pastures, Ruben Papoyan said on the phone, 'It's 'Teghout' CJSC and not Ruben Papoyan. You should address these questions to 'Teghout' CJSC.'
After watching the photos of the areas taken one of the ex-foresters on Shnogh Forestry Enterprise of Lalvar Forestry Enterprise of 'ArmForest' SNCO, who is also a forest expert, confirmed these areas to be forest areas.
Forest Culture Engineer Hovik Sahakyan at Ziliza Forestry Enterprise, who used to be the head of Shnogh Community from 2013 to 2017 and worked also the director of Lalver Forestry Enterprise, said they used to have state and village forests in the Soviet years, while Shnogh used to have 5000 ha of village forest.
We tried to receive the cadastre map of the mine owned by 'Teghout' CjSC from RA State Cadastre of Real Estate, nevertheless, we were required to pay 210,000 AMD to provide us with this map.
February 20, 2018 at 16:44