ArmInfo. There were no agreements between the State Revenue Committee of Armenia and supermarkets to pay fewer taxes. Rafik Mashadyan, first deputy chairman of the State Revenue Committee (SRC), stated this in an interview with journalists on June 28.
According to him, he was invited to the National Security Service and interrogated. The representative of the SRC refrained from assessing the extent to which his answers were satisfied by the investigative body. But, if necessary, he is ready to visit the department once more. Referring to the secret of the investigation, Mashadyan is not ready to talk at what stage the investigation is being conducted and what the investigative bodies came to, and whether the former chairman of the SRC, Vardan Harutyunyan, former Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan and ex-President Serzh Sargsyan are on trial.
Nevertheless, Rafik Mashadyan, then head of the tax inspection department of large taxpayers of Armenia, insists that the RA State Revenue Committee did not give any business entity a privilege. "There were no agreements between SRC and organizations that gave the informal right to underpay taxes to the latter," he said. Nevertheless, as Mashadyan pointed out, the SRC simply "did not administer from those economic entities that operated on one site through two or more organizations."
To recall, on May 30, the National Security Council of Armenia announced the disclosure of a scheme by which large retail chains evaded taxes for years. By creating numerous IPs, Alex Holding LLC instead of VAT at a rate of 20% and the profit tax paid only the turnover tax (2%), processing the goods on fake IPs. "Taking advantage of the opportunity given by the ex-leadership of the SRC, arbitrary and illegal," Alex Holding ", in addition to local agricultural products, through these PIs sold other products, as well as imported agricultural products, paying only turnover tax," the NSS informed. It was stressed that according to reliable data , the previous leadership of SRC was given a similar opportunity to 11 other large companies engaged in network trading, which created obviously unfavorable and unequal competition e conditions for other enterprises involved in agricultural trade and paying VAT.
On June 4, the head of the National Security Council Arthur Vanetsyan in the parliament, referring to the sensational violations in the activity of Armenian supermarkets, said that within the framework of this case the Deputy Head of the State Revenue Committee Rafik Mashadyan will be questioned. "Mashadyan will be questioned, as he was present at the negotiations, during which the SRC gave such privileges to the supermarket owners," Vanetsian said.