A Hetq source at AmeriaBank claims that three weeks ago a team of auditors was sent from Moscow to look into loans made by the bank that eventually “disappeared” in a maze of offshore transactions.

The source says that the auditors were sent at the urging of Ruben Vardanyan, a businessman based in Moscow who is also an AmeriaBank shareholder.

Hetq broke the story as to how AmerriaBank lent $12 million to one Ashot Sukiasyan, a diamond jeweler.

From June 25, 2010 to June 15, 2011, Ashot Sukiasyan received periodic loans of $10.7 million from AmeriaBank. As collateral, however, he used companies owned by Paylak Hayrapetyan and the latter’s son.

Receiving the money, however, Sukiasyan failed to abide by the loan agreement conditions and the business plan he had presented. But this didn’t prevent AmeriaBank to continue freely transferring amounts to several bank accounts owned by companies registered in Cyprus.

According to instructions of the Dzoragyugh Production Cooperative, AmeriaBank wired some $9,370,450 of the loan monies transferred to the cooperative’s bank account to the accounts of several offshore companies held at the Hellenic Bank Publik Company of Cyprus. The loan monies were transferred to:

A.B.S. GLOBAL LIMITED- $7,020,450

WLISPERA HOLDINGS LIMITED- $350,000

STR EMERALD LIMITED- $2,000,000

According to documents obtained by Hetq, RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and Archbishop Navasard Kjoyan, Locum Tenens of the Ararat Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, are shareholders in Wlispera and A.B.S. Global Ltd.

The Hetq source claims that the auditors found a number of glaring violations in the loan package that might led to a number of heads rolling in upper management. 

(Photo, left to right: Artak Hanesyan, Andrey Mkrtchyan, Gagik Sahakyan)