Is it the USA Who is Guilty of Russian Loot? Tracking Bastrigin’s Statement

Yesterday Head of the Investigation Service of the Russian Federation Alexander Bastrigin gave an interview to “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” newspaper in which he claimed that the Yerevan protests against electricity price hike in June were anti-Russian and funded by the USA. Bastrigin mentioned “reliable sources” and “observers” functioning in place as sources of information.

Instead of Catching the Robber

In this respect, we should firstly remind once again that the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) belonging to Russian “InterRAO” OJSC submitted the claim to raise the tariffs for electricity in Armenia. It should be noted that 14 percent of the income of this company goes to “Inter RAO” in the form of profit.

As a result of the rise in the tariff for electricity, we, Armenians, are going to pay additional 75 million USD to ENA (directly, in form of inflation or from the state budget) and the 14% profit of “Inter RAO” OJSC will be ensured from this amount.

In its turn, 46% of “Inter RAO” OJSC indirectly belongs to the Russian Government. Consequently, almost half of the profit obtained from our payments goes to the Russian budget (if there is no corruption on the way). And 18% of “Inter RAO” OJSC belongs to its branch organizations. It means that this profit goes and starts to circulate in the closed chain of its branch organizations.

Naturally, a lot of corruption cases occur in these complicated combinations, in which heads of these pyramid-corporations are involved. Russian investigative journalists and NGOs have a lot of investigations and publications regarding this issue.

And this looting “infection” has also passed to ENA, branch organization of the “Inter RAO”. As a result, along with numerous advantages (such as nuclear power station, small thermal power stations, etc.), Armenians have the highest prices for electricity in the whole CIS region.

Heads of “Inter RAO” OJSC are Igor Sechin and Boris Kovalchuk, who are RF President Vladimir Putin’s close friends and it is a long time since they have been in the center of corruption scandals in Russia. As a result of these corruption scandals, Western sanctions have been imposed on them.

However, in spite of all this, instead of revealing the looting and corruption in that semi-state organization (one of the victims of which are the Armenians), Head of the RF Investigation Service accuses the US in organizing the Armenian protests.

Daniel Ioannisyan
Union of Informed Citizens