Armenia’s Prosecutor General Office reports that some AMD 2 billion (US$4.2m) of the AMD 9 billion allocated between 2013-2018 to replenish the Iskhan fish species in Lake Sevan was either embezzled, through a variety of schemes, or lost, due to mismanagement, involving both government officials and private contractors.

In one case, the government signed an AMD 180 million contract with a company called Sevani Ishkhan CJSC in 2015 to supply 200,000 fingerlings for stocking in the lake.

The fingerlings were never delivered on time due to infrastructure shortages at Lake Sevan and remained in Gyumri.

As a result, a maintenance contract was signed with the Sevani Ishkhan and the latter was paid an additional 151.2 million drams.

Out of the 200,000 fingerlings, only 99,772 survived. This resulted in each fingerling costing 13,896 drams per kg of fish instead of the 5,000 drams originally planned for.

Another case occurred in 2016, when Sevan Aqua CJSC and a Ukrainian company signed a US$319,000 (154.7 million drams) contract for the construction of a catamaran, while a pre-purchase request confirmed the purchase process, as a result of which payments were made without acceptance of the goods.

In addition, the contractual price increased to $470,000, and the delivery period was extended three times, from 180 days to 555 days and the deadline was set at March 17, 2019.

It turned out that the Ukrainian company was unjustly paid $110,000 (53.3 million drams) for modification of the technical specifications, lowering the catamarans into water and transporting it to Armenia, while the supplier had to cover the above costs within the overall contract value.

Based on the collected evidence, a criminal investigation has been launched.