29 year-old Mariam Harutyunyan, who sells women’s jeans and clothing accessories in s store called “Fashion Time” was charged with credit card fraud back in February 2009 after an investigation by the RoA National Security Service. She was indicted with using fake bank cards to withdraw and then launder large sums of cash from automated teller machines in Armenia. The indictment specifies that on October 17, 2008, she pocketed 2,983,000 AMD and deposited it in the bank account of “Kh-DEMI Ltd”, with Cascade Bank. The amount was allegedly filed as a payment she received from the MBNA American Bank. Mrs. Harutyunyan is also the director of “Kh-Demi”. Her case was reviewed by the Kentron and Nork-Marash District Court on June 10, 2009, Judge Zhora Vardanyan presiding. During the trial, Mariam Harutyunyan pleaded guilty to the charges. The court, in its review, took into account the extenuating circumstances that Mrs. Harutyunyan pleaded guilty, expressed remorse for her actions, was a young woman and had no prior criminal record. She also stated in court that her husband had filed for a divorce and that her two young children would be left alone if she were sentenced to serving time. The court also took this factor into account without checking its veracity. The court found her guilty and sentenced her to two and a half years behind bars. Nineteen days after being sentenced, the court pardoned and released her. This case wouldn’t have warranted out attention if it hadn’t been included in the register of the RoA Financial Monitoring Center, as one case of successful prosecution of organized money laundering in Armenia. The Financial Monitoring Center, a division of the RoA Central Bank, is responsible organizing anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism efforts and for these purposes the FMC is charged with collecting, analyzing, exchanging and transmitting information defined by law.  The Armenian FMC uses such cases when it makes reports to “MONEYVAL”, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism, as proof that the Armenian government is taking active measures to prevent such crimes. Armenia signed on as a member of MONEYVAL in 2006. An inter-departmental committee, created by a RoA presidential directive, designed to look into such crimes, assists the FMC in its activities. According to the RoA Central Bank’s Public Affairs Division, the FMC became a member of the Egmont Group, an informal international gathering of financial intelligence units (FIUs), in 2007. The goal of the Egmont Group is to provide a forum for FIUs around the world to improve cooperation in the fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism and to foster the implementation of domestic programs in this field. It would appear that the Armenian FMC is effectively carrying out its mission of exposing “major” laundering cases like that involving the $8,000 purloined by Mariam Harutyunyan.