On 2 August, the director of Sanitek, the company responsible for waste management in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, Nicholas Tawil accused the Armenian authorities of intending to expropriate the company's property.
During a Skype press conference held in Tbilisi Tawil described the criminal case launched against the company over alleged tax evasion as unlawful. Armenia’s tax authorities insist that Sanitek failed to pay 290 million drams (over $600,000) in taxes, while the company explained that it did not evade taxes, but simply benefited from the law that gives certain tax preferences to foreign investors. “The reason for the idea to hold a press conference in Tbilisi is that Sanitek is under aggressive administrative pressure. The criminal case is groundless and illegal, resulting from their political considerations,” said Tawil.
He also expressed his readiness to find a common language with the Yerevan officials. “There are two possible solutions, a short-term and long-term one. The first is to stop the charges and continue cooperation. The long-term solution would be Sanitek’s investments in the amount of $4 million to purchase new machines and containers, to modernize the fleet, introduce corporate management methods and increase transparency and monitoring,” he proposed. In order for this to happen, he called on the municipality to improve the infrastructure at the landfill near Yerevan, revise the existing contract price and repay the already applied “unlawful deductions.”
The Mayor of Yerevan Hayk Marutyan criticized Sanitek for its poor performance and insisted that they are not up to the job. He stressed that Yerevan’s municipality provided full financing to Sanitek without any delays and spoke against raising the contract price with the company, which would inevitably entail the rise of tariffs for the population. “Yerevan must be cleaned. We will clean up Yerevan with or without Sanitek. We are embarking on this process, following a very concrete and straightforward path,” he said.
Previously, on 13 July a group of activists organized a protest action in connection with the problem of garbage removal in the city. Residents of the capital of Armenia complained about overfilled garbage tanks and mountains of rubbish in the streets which sparked the process of ending Yerevan’s cooperation with the company.
SANITEK s.a.r.l is a multinational company headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, which operates in the area of waste treatment facility construction and operation; construction and management of sanitary landfills; composting, street cleaning and clearing; winter maintenance; and pest control. The Armenian branch of Sanitek is under a 12-year contract with Yerevan as a monopolistic waste management operator. It began operating in Yerevan in December 2014.
