ENA had been leasing its expensive automotive equipment “at a giveaway price” to companies affiliated with the “Tashir” group, which in turn carried out construction works for ENA at inflated prices. The contracts have now been terminated

Our  sources within ENA have shared details of yet another financial scheme that had been practiced inside the company.

Specifically, ENA had purchased around 60 units of high-value automotive equipment—manipulators, trucks, drilling machines, aerial platforms—most of them produced in 2017–2018. Naturally, these purchases were reported in ENA’s financial statements as expenses. Later, the company began leasing this equipment to firms affiliated with the “Tashir” group, the same firms that were winning ENA’s construction tenders at considerably high prices. The problem was not only the inflated tenders: the leasing rates were absurdly low—just 200,000 to 300,000 AMD per month.

To put this into perspective, the rental price of almost any of these machines is around 10,000–25,000 AMD per hour. One can easily verify this by searching for a manipulator or an aerial platform on the List.am classifieds website.

Through this scheme, ENA’s owners, with what could be described as “provincial cunning,” reported the purchase of expensive automotive equipment as a company expense. However, by leasing it at ridiculously low rates to their own affiliated companies, they effectively diverted the actual financial benefit of the purchase into another pocket—one that the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) has no access to, and where profits are not accounted for.

The entire point of this scheme was to demonstrate to the PSRC that the Karapetyan family was ostensibly making the required investments, while at the same time showing ENA as insufficiently profitable. The PSRC is the body that, based on ENA’s financial reports, decides whether electricity tariffs should remain unchanged, be raised, or lowered. Thus, ENA’s owners have always been motivated to overstate expenses and understate profits on paper, resorting to such schemes to achieve that end.

According to our reliable sources, by the directive of the Acting Manager of the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), Romanos Petrosyan, steps are being taken to terminate contracts signed at disproportionately low rates. In addition, measures are underway to provide automotive equipment to ENA subdivisions, with the objective of significantly improving the quality of services rendered.”