A businessman who has helped to end a long-standing monopoly on imports of bananas to Armenia reported on Thursday an acid attack on his warehouses in Yerevan.
Vahram Mirakian said that early in the morning someone poured acid on refrigerator compressors of the warehouses where bananas imported by his company are stored. “If the refrigerator had stopped working at night, 20 tons of produce would have perished within an hour,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am).
The 33-year-old entrepreneur said he has alerted the Armenian police about the incident and will ascertain the damage after police officers inspect the scene.
Mirakian also said that the attacker did not damage other equipment or steal any bananas. “I can therefore presume that it was the work of those individuals who are not interested in our importing bananas,” he added without naming names.
Banana imports to Armenia were for many years effectively monopolized by the Katrin Group company reputedly controlled by Mihran Poghosian, the influential former head of a state body enforcing court rulings. Poghosian resigned in April 2016 after being accused of having secret offshore accounts exposed by the Panama Papers. Earlier this year, he was elected to the Armenian parliament on the ruling Republican Party’s ticket.
Prime Minister Karen Karapetian pledged to liberalize these and other lucrative imports shortly after taking office last September. Mirakian and other entrepreneurs started importing bananas later in 2016. The State Revenue Committee (SRC) claimed in November that it has cracked down on unnamed individuals which it said tried to obstruct a banana shipment carried out by one of the new importers.
Mirakian insisted that his company has faced no “artificial obstacles” to its banana imports amounting to 40-80 tons per month. “We were one of the first [new entities] to bring in bananas late last year,” he said. “We have continued steadily binging in bananas since then.”
He also made clear that the latest incident will not force him to pull out of the business.
According to the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition (SCPEC), some 40 entities imported bananas to Armenia last year. Katrin Group accounted for 56 percent of those imports, a commission spokeswoman told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am).