YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. State Revenue Committee (SRC) president Davit Ananyan vows to step down in the event of the SRC’s failure of complete implementation of duties.

Ananyan says he had a discussion over this matter with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who had certain reservations over Ananyan’s appointments of several high-ranking SRC officials.

“Indeed, we are staffing the SRC with young figures from the “bottom”, and this flow is currently being implemented on a great volume, but on the “top” level, in terms of the decision-makers, my policy is that I trust figures who have experience. I don’t see any problem in this regard. I must say that the issue isn’t about staffing, but rather what tasks the SRC faces, are these tasks being implemented or not. The Prime Minister had certain reservations about appointments made by me. We talked and reached an agreement that if the SRC is fulfilling its tasks in complete volumes then the appointments were correct, if it doesn’t then we must draw conclusions. In this event I won’t have anything to do in the SRC along with my appointments,” Ananyan said. Asked if he means that he will resign in that event, he replied: “Of course”.

Speaking about Ara Gabrielyan’s appointment as his deputy, which a newspaper labeled as “an embarrassment”, mentioning Gabrielyan’s criminal conviction in the United States for spying on his ex-girlfriend through GPS, Ananyan said: “We don’t care about it that much. The problem lies in the fact whether or not he is considered a convict under the Armenian legislation, and is there is a problem from the legal perspective over his appointment. If he has been subjected to criminal accountability, has fully served his sentence, he isn’t a convict under our legislation.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan