Mkhitar Matevosyan, the mayor of Vayk, a community in Armenia’s Vayots Dzor province, has signed contracts totaling 537 million drams (US$1.323m) with a company owned by his wife Mary Margaryan.

Matevosyan managed the company since he founded it in January 2013 but transferred his shares and the running of the company to his wife after his election as mayor in December 2021.

According to the data of the armeps.am state procurement system, the Vayk municipality signed four contracts with Mavshin LLC during 2022.

On June 1, 2022, the company was given a 6.5-million-dram contract to fill potholes in Vayk streets.

On June 2, the company signed a 57-million-dram deal to refurbish Vayk’s Mayisyan and Shinararner streets

 On June 6, the company won a 67-million-dram contract to build an irrigation network in the village of Zartap.

On August 4, the company was awarded a 405-million-dram contract to asphalt Vayk’s Shahumyan Street.

Matevosyan’s company, even before he became Vayk mayor, signed fifteen contracts, worth 345 million drams, with various government bodies, mainly with the Vayots Dzor provincial administration and the mayors Vayk, Jermuk and Yeghegnadzor.

Matevosyan accused of fraud

In August 2019, Armenia’s Investigative Committee (IC) charged Mavshin LLV Director Matevosyan of fraud, claiming that the company reneged on a 120-million-dram contract it signed with the Vayk Municipality in 2016 to renovate the community’s stadium and public park.

The IC claimed the company only partially completed the job and that Matevosyan fudged the work sheets to hide the pocketing of four million drams.

The charges were later dropped due to a lack of the facts and circumstances constituting a breach of a law (corpus delicti).