ArmInfo. Head of the economic research office of the ARF Bureau, economist Suren Parsyan suspects the Armenian State Revenue Committee of protectionism towards "Yerevan City".
On February 20, law enforcement officers conducted searches in all 29 supermarkets of the Nor Zovk chain. The State Revenue Committee reported that at Nor Zovk LLC (which manages the Zovk and Nor Zovk supermarket chains), on the instructions of the company's management, an intervention was made in the program managing the issuance of cash register receipts. As a result, cash registers print receipts with all the details, but the sales data are transmitted to the tax service servers at an underestimated value. By not declaring a part of its turnover, the company evades paying taxes on an especially large scale, namely, 4.127 billion drams or about $10.3 million. In response, the company said that the tax authorities raided after the opening of a new Nor Zovk supermarket in Nor Nork, noting the fact that the state resource was used to serve private interests. Nevertheless, on March 1, four defendants in the criminal case - the owner of the company A.A., director R.A., chief accountant S.S. of the Nor Zovk supermarket chain and the owner of the company V.S., who presented a program to evade payment taxes, were arrested for a period of two months.
According to Parsyan, the hype around the Zovk supermarket in recent days reminded him of the events of 2018, when in May-June 2018, the State Revenue Committee of the Republic of Armenia revealed that at the end of 2016, under the pretext of not wanting to cause inflation of local agricultural products, an agreement was reached with the former leadership of the State Revenue Committee of the Republic of Armenia on the sale of agricultural products purchased from farmers in the "Yerevan City" supermarket chain through 461 individual entrepreneurs by the names of different persons. This allowed them to pay 2% turnover tax instead of paying 20% VAT and income tax.
The "shadow turnover" of "Yerevan City", which is connected with the family of the former MP Samvel Aleksanyan, was estimated at 40 billion drams. According to various estimates, the amount of unpaid tax was 6-7 billion drams. Meanwile, in 2023, the amount of underpaid tax due to possible tax evasion of "Zovk" supermarket is estimated at 4.1 billion drams, but the owner, director, chief accountant and other related persons were arrested.
Yes, everyone should pay taxes, at the same time supermarkets should be regulated, limiting their influence on retail trade. However, it remains unclear why no one was detained in the "Yerevan City" case, but in the "Zovk" case, the SRC applied extremely harsh measures. Isn't that protectionism?
In Armenia, the rapprochement between the oligarchs and the authorities continues, which further weakens the security of our country. In Armenia, the merging of the oligarchy with the authorities continues, which further weakens the security of our country>, the economist wrote on his Facebook page.
