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The media has covered the Armenia crisis as it unfolded, through the recent
pre-election period, on Election Day, and particularly since the subsequent
bloody events of the 1st March. Irrespective of political leanings,
all agree that Armenia is going through a crisis period. Through my Blowing the World Bank Whistle campaign, I have been reporting on Armenia’s crisis
for more than a year, not as it unfolds, but through the latter period of its
development. If not challenged, the crisis is destined to continue and worsen
through many coming years.

 

The Kocharian / Sargsyan team now feels confident enough in their new
illegally self-imposed Presidency to put the final pieces of the jigsaw into
place. Parliament’s former Speaker, adorned by his recently adopted morals, has
been reincarnated by Armenia’s new President Sargsyan, the very person who
created him for a previous election fiasco, and together they are feverishly
passing resolutions which on the one hand give Karabakh independence, whilst on
the other take away any independence Armenia may have hitherto enjoyed.

 

In March this year, the UN General Assembly adopted an Azerbaijani
motion reaffirming territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and demanding withdrawal
of all Armenian forces from the occupied territories. The
resolution refers to a UN fact-finding mission of 2005, which confirmed an
outrageous Armenian policy of massive illegal settlement in the territories. Armenia
has preferred to downplay that part of the equation, and the Minsk group, which
has been coordinating conflict resolution for the past ten or more years,
refers to the people located in the surrounding territories as ‘military
personnel’. It is now generally understood that soon the final settlement will
be signed and sealed, and that will be the starter for stage two of the World
Bank’s crisis for Armenia.

 

In the lead
up to the February election, Sargsyan and Kocharian promised to not capitulate
on the Karabakh question. But on the 6th June, Sargsyan met with his
Azerbaijani counterpart in St. Petersburg to talk about a final settlement, and
he and Kocharian are now both expressing their eagerness to sign the conflict
resolution agreement and immediately return the seven regions that make up the
‘surrounding territories’ to Azerbaijan.

 

When that
agreement is signed, the Armenian settlers living in the occupied territories will
flee their homes, many to Yerevan, where their new apartments have awaited them
for the past several years, thanks to Armenia’s ever-caring authorities who
have been laundering their illicit gains in Yerevan’s booming construction
sector. Karabakh will not only have lost its security belt, but Armenia’s
unique acknowledgment of Karabakhi independence will relieve its recently
inaugurated President of any responsibility he may have had to his kinfolk.
Karabakhi inhabitants will therefore join the exodus, fearful of an Azerbaijani
onslaught, many to the apartments and the secure future which have long been
under preparation for them in Galus Sarkissian’s Better than Heaven Yerevan. Bryza is
now eventually talking about the international finances, which have no doubt
long been agreed to fund relocation of displaced persons, and in recent months
Armenia’s leaders have been putting into place the real-estate support services
needed to reap the billions of dollars rewards for their years of patient money
laundering.

The World
Bank / International Monetary Fund crisis program for Armenia will soon be
finally and successfully completed, and whilst it is difficult to imagine what
may be the fate for those who remain in Karabakh, the future for the people of
Armenia is inevitable - less independence, less freedom and many years of
increasing oppression.

 

In
exchange for Armenia’s agreement to capitulate on the Karabakh issue, the Bank
and the IMF have been reporting an Armenian economic boom, with remarkable
levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) and a thriving construction industry.
But the WB/IMF have known that FDI in Armenia has been nothing more than the
re-assignment of stolen state assets to state cronies who have teamed up with oversees
partners, often in Russia. The same financial institutions have also turned a
blind eye to massive money laundering, preferring to praise wonderful achievements
in the construction sector; the local currency has been artificially driven to
ever-increasing highs to favor
monopolistic importers - at the expense of ailing domestic production, but the
sister institutions have reported the Dram has strengthened in response to the
economic boom. And the alarming increase in corruption which has understandably
accompanied this fallacious economic boom has attracted nothing more than
WB/IMF lip-service.

 

The ‘Caucuses
Tiger’ the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been nurturing since
the turn of the century is now fully grown, and it has broken out of its cage. It
has turned on its own people, killing them for peacefully demonstrating their
democratic rights. Moreover, it has turned on its master, calling the U.S.
President a liar and criticizing his affairs in Iraq. So the international
financial institutions, which for the past ten years have been extolling the marvelous achievements of Armenia’s administration, had the
task of bringing their ‘Caucuses Tiger’ back under control.

 

As
Armenia was moving into its meticulously prepared and nigh on irreversible
WB/IMF crisis, the international community decided that it would no longer
tolerate the deceit handed to it by Armenia’s tyrants. It would not be called a
liar and have its international policies criticized, so it demonstrated its
displeasure by cutting off international funding.

 

But years
of feeding the ‘Caucuses Tiger’ with poverty reduction funds which were
intended for the under-privileged, created a self-sustained financial
capability for Armenia’s tyrants, many times greater than the amount of
international finance the Republic receives each year. So cutting off external
finance would be of little significance, easily compensated in a number of
ways, such as by hikes in food and energy prices and by resorting to costly
inter-governmental credits.

 

The World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund decided it was time to tame the beast
that had been created through the rampant corruption they had been driving
since the turn of the century. The Bank sent its INT investigation team to Armenia
to navigate a ‘U-Turn’, away from Armenia’s economic boom and toward a
similarly manipulated, but more easily explained collapsing Armenian economy.
This again is at the expense of the people of Armenia, who are already paying
the price over the counter; who will be burdened with costly inter-governmental
credits; and who will suffer many years of increasing oppression.

 

With the
determined support of the ‘Government Accountability Project’ (GAP), Washington’s
most influential human rights and freedom of speech organization, and based on
comprehensively documented evidence I gathered as Senior Specialist for Vahan
Hovhanissian’s Parliamentary Commission in 2004, for the past year we have been
pressing the INT to carry out an investigation into this politically motivated
and highly corrupt agenda the World Bank has been driving in Armenia since the
turn of the century.

 

The Bank
and its watchdog unit, the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) have
little respect for transparency, preferring to conduct their activities behind
closed doors. But it now appears that the INT has used my claim as pretence and
eventually carried out its investigation. Consequently, the latest World Bank
Armenia report clearly shows that the ‘Caucuses Tiger’ is now having its teeth extracted
and thorns stuck in its feet - by the very people who bottle fed it from birth
and later, in the run-up to Armenia’s recent Presidential election, taught it how
to stalk and kill its prey.

 

The
final outcome of the Karabakh part of the equation has yet to be seen. But with
similar determination and ever-widening exposure, it is hoped that when the conflict
resolution agreement is eventually signed, the finance for the operation will
not end up in state crony bank accounts, but will help the people who will
suffer the most as a result – the people forced from the surrounding
territories and from Karabakh.

 

Bruce Tasker

Senior Specialist

Armenian Parliamentary
Commission (2003/4)

Whistleblower 

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