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The Violations Detection and Administrative Proceedings Implementation Department of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee (SRC) has uncovered a number of business operators engaged in imports from the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries that have attempted to avoid taxes by taking advantage of the liberalization of imports process and presenting false data.

As the Information and Public Relations Department of the SRC told Panorama.am, some business operators have used different methods every time in attempted tax evasion.

Head of the Department Samvel Sinanyan said: “They [the business operators] carry out imports through various companies operating under the names of their relatives or they create companies under the names of financially insecure people who are not related to them, so that the person is unable to pay the taxes in the future.”

The Violations Detection and Administrative Proceedings Implementation Department, in cooperation with SRC’s other departments, has uncovered a number of similar cases when the business operators avoided their tax duties by concealing the sales turnover.

Thus, Havitsa LLC, a company engaged in eggs, grain and poultry imports from the EAEU states, namely from Russia, presented false turnover reports to the tax Inspectorate in 2016, thus avoiding VAT tax duties amounting to 28 million 104 thousand AMD. Later it was revealed that Head of Havitsa Company Armen Khachatryan had operated other companies as well. In a similar scheme, Teghakan (Local) LLC avoided tax payment of 16 million 592 thousand AMD and Gndevaz poultry evaded 3 million 736 thousand tax payment.

The Violations Detection and Administrative Proceedings Implementation Department has launched criminal cases into evasion of significant amount of taxes under Part 1 and 2 of Article 205 of the RA Criminal Code. The initiated cases have been sent to the Investigative Department of the SRC to conduct a joint preliminary probe.