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Armenia’s law enforcement authorities have detained the owner, general director and chief accountant of Nor Zovq supermarket chain on tax fraud charges.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Investigative Committee said A.A., who fully owns Nor Zovq LLC, supermarket chain director R.A. and its chief accountant S.S. distorted the financial statements in an effort to hide its real income and avoid paying 4.1 billion drams in various taxes from 2019 to 2023. A software company was also involved in the tax fraud.

“In order to smoothly carry out the criminal scheme, to conceal the real income generated by all the supermarkets and at the same time to oversee the real trade turnover, they hired a software company to provide the relevant technical means and tools in return for a payment,” the law enforcement agency said.

A sales software was installed in the supermarket chain, which was attached to a secret electronic server system. As a result, the real sales turnover was stored in the electronic server system, while customers were given receipts showing the real amount of the transaction generated by the software.

Thus, the company avoided paying over 2.2 billion drams of VAT and over 1.9 billion drams of income tax.

The preliminary probe is underway.