By Kima Khachatryan

Three days ago Hetq published an article about telephone marketing companies in Yerevan purportedly selling magazines and books for charitable purposes.

One of the marketing outfits we named was Dil Master who called the Hetq office making a sales pitch for a coloring book, the revenues of which we were told would go to assist a five year-old disabled girl called Mariam.

Hetq also got a similar call from an outfit called Distribution Armenia.

The person on the other end of the line told us the company was selling books of fairytales and that it was their first charitable drive.

The telemarketer did not provide us with the phone number of the company director nor did she give us any details about the child who was allegedly to benefit from the book sales.

We also asked to speak to the office manager, but were told the official wasn’t available at the moment. The company promised that the manager would call back. So far, we haven’t heard from him/her.

After making the call, we checked the state registry and found that Distribution Armenia wasn’t listed.

The director, Hrachya Harutyunyan, told Hetq that this was a mere oversight. He says that Distribution Armenia was originally set up as an individual proprietorship to engage in charitable work but that it later started to sell magazines. A magazine, Sedi Design, was launched last year in August, he said, but that it didn’t get off the ground. The magazine and the proprietorship were subsequently close.

Harutyunyan claims to have assisted individuals and orphanages and videos on the company’s Facebook page attest to this. He mentioned the names of two magazines that were being marketed for charitable aims – Sedi Design and Me and You.

The magazine “Gitounik” belonging to Dil Master and the “Me and You” publication are said to have contributed 300,000 AMD in charity.

“Me and You” was also published under the Distribution Armenia name and belonged to Hrachya Harutyunyan.

When we asked if there was any link between Dil Master and Distribution Armenia, Harutyunyan said that the only connection was that the two outfits worked out of the same building.

“We heard that Dil Master was preparing to assist an orphanage and we teamed up with them. I transferred 150,000 AD for that charitable campaign. The funds went to the “Children’s Home” orphanage in Yerevan” Harutyunyan said.