A Blowing the World Bank Whistle Revelation

The first ‘Blowing the World Bank Whistle’ annual report of 11^th April 2008 was accompanied by a message in which I accused the Bank and the IMF of having colluded with the Armenian authority since the turn of the century in a highly corrupt Five Billion Dollar politically motivated agenda in preparation for the imminent resolution of the Karabakh conflict. The report was distributed to hundreds of Email recipients, including Vardan Oskanian, Armenia’s outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs, who has been reporting on the Karabakh issue for the past ten years of his tenure.

A week after that report, the Armenian press covered an analysis by Vardan Oskanian, who commented that “for the first time ever in the history of this conflict a document that they thought has reached the maturity which can be put at the OSCE Secretariat as a clear guideline”. Oskanian then makes his revelation that International financial assistance would be made available for reconstruction and resettlement of internally displaced persons - not only in the formerly occupied territories, but in all the war-affected regions of Nagorno-Karabakh. His analysis presumably includes financial assistance (which this campaign has referred to as ‘Compensation’) for resettlement of internally displaced persons who will be obliged to leave the presently occupied surrounding territories and from Karabakh.

This is the first time an Armenian or international public official has talked with the Armenian media about the question of financial assistance for displaced persons. The Minsk Group has referred to the 7 or 8 thousand Armenian and Karabakhi civilians who live in the surrounding occupied territories as ‘occupying forces’, who will simply have to leave the territory, and the 140ish thousand who presently live in Nagorno-Karabakh will apparently live in harmony with their new Azerbaijani neighbours. Neither of course is the case; there will be tens of thousands of displaced persons, and so financial assistance must be in place to compensate their losses and to assist with their re-location.

The Minsk group and the international community prefer the philosophy of Azerbaijanis and Armenians living peacefully side-by-side under an international peacekeeping force, and so they have not made public the question of compensation for displaced persons. The Armenian authorities have been eagerly looking forward to receiving the displaced persons, but preferring to keep that lucrative multi-billion dollar part of the re-settlement equation under their monopolistic control, they have withheld information about the compensation package from the Armenian and Karabakhi people. The Azerbaijani authorities keep quiet on compensation, knowing how hard it would be to explain to their people how several billions of dollars were paid to peacefully regain sovereignty of Karabakh and the surrounding territories. Russia, who will probably act as a go-between by converting the financial assistance package to investment, will be quietly sitting back and waiting to take its cut. And the World Bank and the IMF who have been supporting this thoroughly corrupt program, will have been scheduling in a few more years of economic boom for Armenia, based on foreign investment in Armenia’s construction sector.

But could this be a sign that the times are now a changing for Armenia’s new tyrannical authority. This recently announced Vardan Oskanian analysis of international finance for displaced persons is certainly a revelation. The details of the finance package must now be fully revealed to the peoples of Armenia and of Karabakh so that they will be able to claim the compensation that is due to them. After all, these are the peoples who will suffer after Serge Sargsyan eventually signs the agreement that will lead to resolution of the long-standing Karabakh conflict. It is for these peoples that the compensation money is being paid; not so that Armenia’s corrupt inner circle can make billions more dollars at the expense of the Armenian (and now the Karabakhi) people.

Let us hope that with enough pressure we will soon see more revelations to add to this latest revelation from Vardan Oskanian.

A World Bank Crisis for Armenia – The Intrigue

Now that the Kocharian / Sargsyan team has imposed its new Presidency in Armenia, they are ready to move to full implementation of the World Bank Crisis for Armenia Program.

The UN General Assembly has adopted an Azerbaijani motion which reaffirms territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, demands the withdrawal of all Armenian forces from the occupied territories, and refers to outrageous and massive illegal Armenian settlement in the territories. Sargsyan is already on his way to Russia and immediately after his inauguration he will be meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart to talk about resolution of the Karabakh conflict.

Blowing the World Bank Whistle has covered how the signing of the Karabakhi agreement will initiate the re-location of settlers from the occupied territories to their recently constructed apartments in Yerevan and through acknowledgment of Karabakhi independence Armenia will be relieved of any responsibility it may have to Karabakh. The occupied territories have been held by Armenia since 1993 as a security ring for the capital city Stepanakert, and with them under Azerbaijani control, Karabakh will be under increasing threat, causing its population to join the exodus.

The finance for the World Bank Armenia Crisis Program is the intriguing part of the jigsaw, a closely guarded secret. And no doubt for the people of Armenia, who will be paying for the whole sordid and highly corrupt affair, it will remain that way. But the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Armenian tyrants who have for the past five years or more been carefully preparing for this moment, are in no doubt of where the finance is coming from; of how many billions of dollars are involved, and of how that money will be surreptitiously manoeuvred into Armenia to create another fabricated wave of foreign investment, and importantly to escape the attention of the rightful beneficiaries, the people of Armenia.

A most suiting scenario is of course through the Kocharian / Sargsyan friends in Russia, who in the run up to the recent Presidential election farce came to Armenia announcing their intention to increase investment in the Armenia construction sector. Why would Russian oligarchs want to increase their investment in Armenia’s construction sector, when projects they have purportedly already financed been stacking up for the past years and as yet have failed to find the tens of thousands of occupants needed to return the hundreds of millions of dollars investment already committed.

Blowing the World Bank Whistle has been posing that question throughout the past year, and today the answer is no longer a secret. The apartments are needed to re-house the residents who are driven from Karabakh and the surrounding territories when Sargsyan signs the agreement he has been keeping under his belt as a tool to persuade the international community the legitimacy of his recently enforced Presidency.

But Russia’s private investors will not be providing the apartments free of charge, and equally those who are forced to re-locate will not cherish the thought of losing their homes in Karabakh, or the surrounding territories, and having to pay the exorbitant prices being asked for Yerevan’s recently constructed real-estate. A compensation package must therefore be in place to finance the entire re-location program, and that compensation will undoubtedly be from the party who stands to gain most - Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan will undoubtedly pay the multi-billion dollar cost of the program in preference to expending even more money, losing many lives and destroying valuable assets in a war to regain Karabakh sovereignty. The international community would be persuaded to support such a scenario, preferring not to unduly publicize the tens of thousands forcibly re-located; Russia would take a healthy cut for facilitating the compensation to investment conversion program, and Armenia’s state cronies will pick up their multi-billion dollar reward for the years they have been patiently laundering their money. And yet again, all at the expense of the people of Armenia, who will find themselves under years of increasing tyranny at the hands of the very people they saved from an Azerbaijani onslaught in the early 90’s.

That is why, for the past year the World Bank’s investigatory unit, the Department of Institutional Integrity, has refused to carry out an investigation into rampant fraud and corruption in World Bank Armenia projects, despite repeated requests from me and from the influential international group that supports my claim, because it knows that this World Bank Crisis Program for Armenia has been completely unscrupulous and highly corrupt.

A World Bank Crisis for Armenia

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 1^st 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 6^th 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 Armenia Yerevan. Bryza is now eventually talking about the international finances to fund this operation, which have no doubt long been agreed, 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 situation in which Armenia’s tyrants were generating a self-sustaining financial capability many times greater than the amount of international finance the Republic receives each year. So cutting off external finance would be of little significance, and could be 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 resolved not to investigate the cause of the crisis, the rampant corruption the WB/IMF had been driving since the turn of the century, but to tame the beast they themselves had created. The Bank sent its INT investigation team to Armenia to navigate a ‘U-Turn’ away from Armenia’s economic boom toward a similarly manipulated, but more realistic 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 Washington’s most influential human rights and freedom of speech organization, the ‘Government Accountability Project’ (GAP), 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, based on comprehensively documented evidence I gathered as Senior Specialist for Vahan Hovhanissian’s Parliamentary Commission in 2004.

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 eventually carried out its investigation, using my claim as pretence. 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 agreement is eventually signed, the people who will suffer as a result will be able to claim the compensation to which they will be entitled.

Bruce Tasker

Senior Specialist

Armenian Parliamentary Commission (2003/4)

Whistleblower