“The
Victims of State Needs” non-governmental organization has found out whom those
apartments actually belong to, the state undertook to provide compensation to
the residents of the sold area. 

 “We have the copies of ownership certificates
of those apartments, which we took from the cadastre. This shows that the RA
Government cheats the European Court”, the head of the organization Sedrak
Baghdasaryan told www.hra.am.

Three
owners of the sold houses at Byuzand 25 address -Sedrak Baghdasaryan, Grigori
Hovhannisyan and Levon Ghasabyan applied to the European Court of Human Rights.
They ask to review their complaints, discuss it and make a judgment, because
the RA Government did not fulfill its responsibility and did not provide them
with the promised apartments within three months.

The
complaints of the three owners were taken out of the proceedings, because the
RA Government suggested that it would give each of the applicants instead of
their destroyed houses an apartment with 115-117 square meters dwelling space
in the elite buildings that are built in the place of the destroyed houses.

Taking
into consideration that the suggestion on November 15, 2011 the ECHR decided to
give the RA Government 3 months to provide the promised compensation. Three
months later Baghdasaryan, Grigoryan and Ghabasyan turned to the Ministry of
Justice to find out when and how they will get the promised apartments. Having
received an uncertain answer, they applied to the ECHR asking to review the
complaint and make a judgment.

According
to Sedrak Baghdasaryan, RA Deputy Minister of Justice Ruben Melikyan told them,
that they will receive apartments only if they return the USD 22.000, which
they received as compensation. Baghdasaryan mentions 2 reasons for not
returning that sum: firstly, there is no such a point in the decision of the
ECHR, secondly, that sum is given not by the RA government, but by the building
company, therefore the state has no right to demand it.

He
says: “We received that sum without an agreement and used it rent a flat” and
adds that USD 22.000 is a trivial and inadequate compensation for a 117 square
meter house.

We
turned to the RA Ministry of Justice for a clarification of the reason for
returning the compensation sum and we were told that Ruben Melikyan had already
commented upon that.

Ruben
Melikyan told one of the newspapers that although it is not stated literally in
the ECHR decision, however while presenting the suggestions during the
negotiations by saying “compensation of all expenditures” the government of
Armenia meant that “no other compensation should be provided, and the provided
compensation should be returned”.

 “The whole logic is that we provide an
apartment with a space that is twice bigger, which would include all the
expenditures that the person made during previous years, which will include the
compensation of material and non-material damages. For instance, in the case of
Baghdasaryan we are going to provide an apartment with 117,5 square meters
instead of 55 square meters in the same area- Amiryan street, in the case of
Gharibyan 115,6 square meters instead of 44,1, in the case of Ghasabyan 117,7
square meters instead of 57. The state made this suggestion as a solution of
this situation”, Ruben Melikyan explained to the newspaper.

He
also said that the Armenia always enforced the decisions and judgments of the
European Court properly and the issue of compensation to the previous owners of
Byuzand 25 houses should be discussed and confirmed in the next session of the
RA Government.

During
the RA Government session of April 5, a decision was made for the
implementation of the European Court of Human Rights decision made based
on  the complaints of RA citizens to pay
as a compensation EUR 63 thousand 545,USD 120 thousand and AMD 29 million 520
thousand (these monetary compensation is not related to the housing
compensation).

The
head of the “The Victims of State Needs” NGO Sedrak Baghdasaryan says that
still in the negotiation phase they have found out that the suggested
apartments are already sold and they informed the European Court. 

However
the ECHR accepted the suggestion of the RA government because the certificates
of ownership of those apartments were presented to the court. At tomorrow’s
press conference Sedrak Baghdasaryan and his attorney are going to prove that
the apartments already have owners.