During the May 23rd Ijevan Community Council session a resolution was passed to obtain legal services in order to, “Make the author of a slanderous article to assume responsibility for his writings.” The draft of the resolution reads in part, “…taking into account the proposal of the Mayor, the Council has decided to…obtain the services of legal counsel, at the cost of 930,000 drams, to make the author of the article in question assume responsibility for his statements.”

The “slanderous” articles in question appeared in the pages of “Hetq” (Who is Pocketing the Profits from the Sand Mine?, Illegal Operation of the Sand Mine Reaps Big Profits).

During the Council session one of the members, Vahe Ghalumyan, asked why the Mayor wasn’t availing himself of the services of the lawyer attached to the Mayor’s Office, Mr. Gaylikyan, and was it correct to spend 930,000 drams from the community’s budget? Mayor Varujan Nersisyan answered that this matter needed to be handed over to an attorney with a special permit and that the funds would be returned to the budget in any event.

The question remains just how legal and sensible is it to allocate more than $3,000 from the community’s tight budget just in order to get the Mayor exonerated of the charges when the town faces a thousand other problems. For example, Mayor Nersisyan can use the money to repair the bumpy road leading to his private house. The scores of Ijevan cabbies who ply their trade along the pot-holed roads of the regional district center always have a few “choice words” to remember the Mayor by.

After “Hetq” published the article regarding the illegal sand mine operation at the White Water reservoir (Who is Pocketing the Profits from the Sand Mine?), Anna Mantashyan, a Tavush Regional Prosecutor, issued a directive on May 21st to Samvel Galstyan, Chief of the Ijevan Police Department. The directive called on Mayor Varujan Nersisyan and Jora Sahabalyan, Head of the Tavush Regional Office of the State Environmental Inspectorate (SEI), attached to the Ministry of Nature Protection, to jointly create a professional committee to study the issues raised in the articles and to prepare materials on the matter. This would result in exposing the guilty parties, the amount of the losses incurred by the government and the bringing of criminal charges if a basis was found to do so. Prosecutor Anna Mantashyan noted that 10 days is usually sufficient to study the facts of the case but given the scope of the matter in question, the process could take longer.

Tavush Regional Governor Armen Ghularyan has also formed a committee on his own regarding the charges raised in the articles. Mr. Sahabalyan of the Tavush SEI is convinced that sand is being illegally extracted from the Ijevan body of water. In his words, the agreement entered into by the Ijevan Municipality with three individuals to “clean-out” the lake is illegal since the Nature Ministry has yet to conduct a study of the reservoir’s reserves and has not issued permission to undertake such a work project. Such a study is required since the river can also carry dangerous waste materials along with the sand and sediments. These elements, if used without the approval of the Ministry, could thus have serious consequences. If the reservoir is being cleaned, where are the hundreds of thousands of tons of dredged sediment being dumped? The transportation and dumping involved in such a huge operation must be approved by the State Inspectorate beforehand. Or is it the case that those cleaning out the reservoir are actually benefactors and are performing the work at their own expense? In actuality, under the guise of “cleaning”, huge amounts of sand have been extracted over the past 4-5 years.

On June 13th we were again back at the reservoir in Ijevan and chatted with Onik Ohanyan, an equipment operator at the mining site. He has a small trailer parked above the reservoir. The excavator he operates was smack in the middle of the river. Onik pointed to the overflowing Aghstev River and said that he couldn’t dredge sand in these conditions. He told us that he suffered a heart attack two years ago and that he’s cut back on his workload. Onik also stated that he was paying taxes on the sand mining even though he confessed that he didn’t have the extraction permit. He dredges sand right from the river channel, about 100 meters from the mouth of the reservoir. That same day, we witnessed sand continuously being dredged from the reservoir.

There was a jumble of men and machines near the mounds of sand. The above mentioned articles created quite a stir in Ijevan. Those actually engaged in mining the sand were well aware of the articles and thus it was somewhat dangerous to approach these people. We decided to wait atop the dam road to stop a Zil dump truck loaded with sand. When the driver saw that we were photographing the truck he slammed on the brakes, got out of the cab and approached us. Noticing our press badges, the 55-60 year-old man, said that he wasn’t transporting sand but rather sediment. We asked him if it was all right to take a look-see. Not getting an answer, we climbed atop the truck and saw that the truck’s cargo was indeed sand.

We found out that the driver was none other than the father of Karen Atabekyan, someone engaged in the sand mine operation. On August 3, 2007 Karen Atabekyan was fined 120,000 drams by the Ijevan Regional Tax Department for conducting illegal mining and was obligated to register as a “producer of mine ore concentrates” with the tax service. Back on November 16, 2005 his brother, Armen Atabekyan, was also hit with a 68,000 dram fine and he too is now registered as a tax-payer. How do these people get away with mining sand if they have no permission to do so and if there’s been no official study conducted regarding the reserves? Antranik Khojumyan, another person engaged in mining sand and who is a close friend of Ijevan Mayor Nersisyan, removed his equipment from the reservoir after our article was published and parked it all along the water’s banks, where he owns a huge facility. As an aside, this facility of his was also erected with sand from the reservoir.

Who exactly is keeping tabs on just how much sand is daily being extracted from the reservoir? Presently there’s a huge construction boom going on in the Ijevan and Dilijan districts. Try as we could we weren’t able to track down one legitimate business or individual selling sand in the entire area. However, we were able to ascertain where the sand needed for all this construction was coming from. We were in the town of Dilijan on June 17th. There, along with a number of other projects, an amphitheater is being built. We asked the work crew chief where the sand was being brought in from and he replied - from the Ijevan lake.

Illegal sand mining has been going on for some time now. Two years ago the Tavush Regional Prosecutor, in a response to a query of ours, stated that in 2005 three residents of Ijevan were hit with administrative penalties for illegally mining a sand/pebble mixture. Two of the residents were fined to the tune of 80,000 drams apiece and the third for 150,000 drams.

According to a decision passed by the Armenian government on October 6, 2005 the reservoir was formally granted to the Ijevan municipality. It would thus appear that the mining going on under the nose of said municipality has its tacit approval.

Mayor Varujan Nersisyan, who on November 10, 2003 was bestowed with a certificate of merit by the late Prime Minister Antranik Margaryan for his work in the local self-governance sector, who was the representative of Armenia at the Council of Europe’s “Local and Regional Governance Congress” and who took a leadership training course at Harvard University in May, 2001, isn’t really at ease with adopting a transparent work ethic. The Mayor has yet to respond to our inquiry sent on April 16th of this year that asks if any firm or individual has been granted permission to exploit the reservoir’s sand and whether taxes for such activities are being paid into the state budget.

On May 27, 2008, residents of two dormitories belonging to the Ijevan Municipality demonstrated outside the Government Building in Yerevan. They were protesting the fact that for the past few years they have been living in sub-standard conditions, without bathroom facilities and sewers. On June 13th Armen Gevorgyan, Armenia’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Territorial Administration, held a working consultation session at the Tavush Regional Office. In Ijevan 64 town residents handed him a letter they all had signed that was addressed to President Serzh Sargsyan.

In the petition residents of the two dorms complained about a host of actions taken by their Mayor and against the actions taken by him against the author of the articles on the illegal sand mining. The residents note that, “In the article in question there was nothing about the activities of the Mayor's Office or about the community. What the article specifically points to is the plundering of the sand mine by the Mayor. Where is it written that the community budget can be used for the personal needs of the Mayor? Those 930,000 drams could be spent to ameliorate the sanitary conditions in our buildings. What it comes down to is that the Mayor wants to use that money from our community's coffers on his own while there isn't even a penny being spent on improving our living conditions.

The same petition notes that there isn't even one public toilet in Ijevan, a town the Mayor boasts as being a tourist center.