Hetq.am: Armenian General who mastered Panama’s offshore’s ins and outs
Major General of Justice Mihran Poghosyan, Armenia’s Chief Compulsory Enforcement Officer, is one of the country’s officials who has sown deep roots in offshore economic zones. While his companies registered in those zones operate, Poghosyan uses his position to advance his business interests, all the while concealing his income. The data was obtained by the German newspaper SüddeutscheZeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 110 media partners from 82countries, including hetq.am. Details about these transactions are buried in the Panama Papers, a trove of internal data of Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian legal firm doing business in offshore tax havens for clients who want to hide their identities and/or holdings.There are Armenians included in these documents – CES chief Mihran Poghosyan and members of the families of his uncles Grigor and Mikhail Haroutyunyan. 40 year-old Poghosyan has headed the Compulsory Enforcement Service (CES) since 2008. His professional career began at the National Security Service (NSS) of Armenia. Poghosyan’s uncle Grigor (Grisha) Haroutyunyan was the deputy head of the NSS’s financial division at the time. According to the decoded documents, Poghosyan has shares in three companies registered in Panama - Sigtem Real Estates Incorporated, Hopkinten Trading Incorporated and BANGIO INVEST S.A. Poghosyan, with a degree in economics, masters the complexities of the offshore world. Poghosyan is a stockholder through a clever device called ‘bearer shares’ where the holder of the share in the corporation is unknown but can nevertheless enforce his rights as a shareholder. A bearer share is an equity security that is wholly owned by whoever holds the physical stock certificate. The issuing firm neither registers the owner of the stock, nor does it track transfers of ownership. More details can be found here
