Hetq Probe Hits Brick Wall with Some Judges Last year, during a press interview on court reform, Arman Mkrtumyan, President of the Court of Cassation, was asked what steps he would take to ensure that judges follow the letter of the law and not engage in outside commercial enterprise. “We will dismiss all judges that are engaged in such business. As to business related information, all judges will have to submit their tax declarations. I don’t think you will find a judge engaged in business after looking through these declarations,” said the Court President. Hetq has started to delve into these tax declarations in an attempt to uncover what judges actually have outside sources of income in addition to their salaries. To date, we have looked at the finances of two judges in the Civil Court of Appeals, Tigran Sahakyan and Taron Nazaryan. Had the president of the Cassation Court kept his promise to reporters, these two judges would have been dismissed since they are involved in outside commercial activity. Back in May, we informed Davit Avetisyan, President of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation and the Judges’ Ethics Committee, about these two judges and scores of others. At the time, Mr. Avetisyan replied that he had found nothing debatable in their tax declarations. Included in our list of “suspicious” judges submitted to the Ethics Committee was Arman Mkrtumyan, President of the Court of Cassation. According to a Hetq source within the court system, the month long discussions held by the Committee were focused on the Mkrtumyan affair. Our source claims that the judges were willing to have their explanations published, but the Ethics Committee, however, never handed over their findings to Hetq. In 2008, Arman Mkrtumyan declared 58,922,199 AMD and 1,208 Euros. These amounts exceed his salary many times over. We held out hope that Arman Mkrtumyan, who a year ago had expressed a willingness to dismiss judges engaged in business, would do the right thing and come clean in his own case, but we were mistaken. Hoping to get some answers, we telephoned his administrative assistant. When she heard what we were after, she immediately blurted out, “Arman Mkrtumyan doesn’t want anything to do with you. He doesn’t talk to any reporters,” He received a similar reply from Alina Yengoyan, Press Secretary at the Court of Cassation. “The Ethics Committee has already answered your questions. Arman Mkrtumyan has nothing to add.” Given that government officials make their revenue and property declarations available to reporters in an abridged certificate form, we cannot say how Arman Mkrtumyan, awarded the title of “Meritorious Judge” by the Armenian government, has been able to amass 59 million AMD and 1,208 Euros. We can only note that the judge has seen his personal wealth increase over the last three years. In 2005, when Arman Mkrtumyan served as President of the Cassation Court’s Civil and Economic Affairs Chamber, he declared a mere 3,729,569 AMD in assets. That year Mr. Mkrtumyan owned a house measuring 225.7 square meters and a production facility of 275 square meters. Last year, some sensational articles appeared in the papers about the property owned by the Court President. The information came from the judge’s father. Anatoly Matevosyan, President of the Civil Appeals Court, also refused to comment on his property holdings. When we called, it was his advisor that answered. He listened to our question and requested a bit of time to arrange a meeting with the judge. We called back a few hours later, the first thing out of the mouth of the advisor was, “Are you the guy writing about the financial declarations of judges in the paper?” When I answered in the affirmative, the advisor said that, “Mr. Matevosyan isn’t receiving visitors and can’t meet with you.” When I replied, “In other words he is refusing to comment on the matter?” the advisor retorted, “No, he isn’t refusing comment. It’s simply that he’s not seeing anyone. They are different things.” All we were to ask Anatoly Matevosyan was where he got the $8,000 from. He also declared 5,287,643 AMD, which you might assume is his salary but even this is fishy since judges’ salaries were only doubled in 2009. In 20008, Anatoly Matevosyan served as the President of the RoA Southern Civil Court. Artur Arakelyan, a judge with the Administrative Court, also didn’t want to speak to us. Through an assistant he told us to make due with the affidavit supplied by the tax agency since he had nothing to add by way of clarification. Artur Arakelyan is one of the many judges that have declared revenue in foreign currency. In 2008, when a judge at the Yerevan Civil Court, he declared revenue of 6,594,292 AMD and $6, 000, both amounts far in excess of his salary. As far as we’ve been able to make out, amounts of foreign currency declared by judges are in the form of stock dividends and interest.