On February 7 at the RA Administrative Court the consideration of the dispute
between Gyumri Tax Inspection and the founder of “GALA” TV company, “CHAP” LLC,
started. As it has been reported, on October 22, 2007 the owner of “CHAP” LLC
Vahan Khachatrian issued a statement regarding the attempts of various power
agencies to exert pressure on the TV channel. The document stressed the infallibility
of the TV channel’s stance and the readiness to prevent any attempt of intervention
into its editorial policy. One week after the statement a tax audit started
at “CHAP”, after which the RA State Tax Service reported the violations revealed.
In particular, this referred to concealed amounts of TV advertising, due to
which “CHAP” must pay approximately 26 million AMD to the state budget. The
owner of “CHAP” Vahan Khachatrian, on his behalf, announced that “GALA” could
not have the advertising volume that the calculations of the tax officers based
on. On November 27, the RA Commercial Court accepted a lawsuit versus “CHAP”
from Gyumri Tax Inspection with a demand to recover from “CHAP” the tax liabilities
of 25.2 million AMD (including penalties and fines and excluding the taxes already
paid). Through a motion of the tax officers on December 3 the property and finance
of “CHAP” were taken into custody. On December 17 the court hearings started
that were interrupted on December 18 after the court accepted the counter-claim
of “CHAP” demanding to abolish the act on the results of audit and ruled to
unite the two suits in one (see YPC Weekly Newsletter, December
14-20, 2007). The case was further taken to be considered by the RA Administrative
Court (by the judicial reform, the Commercial Court is abolished in Armenia
since 2008).
At the session of February 7 “CHAP” made two motions about undergoing a complex
judicial and accounting as well as technical assessment. On February 8 the court
refused the first motion and secured the second one. The hearings were interrupted
until the results of the technical assessment come in.
