When Italian police seized $880 million worth of “extremely pure” cocaine headed to Armenia, packed in containers carrying bananas from Ecuador. Report 301

The 301 team decided to investigate the recent drug epidemic in Armenia. What we found was in recent years, there has been a significant increase in cases of illegal drug trafficking and drug use among teenagers, minors, and women.

The platforms used for drug distribution have become more diverse, with Telegram being one prominent platform. Drug distribution through Telegram has expanded on a large scale, particularly in schools and universities, through advertisements posted on Telegram channels related to drugs. The problem of drug addiction can be particularly severe in the post-war period, as young people and teenagers turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the fears and anxieties resulting from the war. This has led to a rise in drug spread.

The “False Prophet” from Ijevan systematically promotes the narrative that his wise economic policies managed to create unprecedented prosperity in Armenia since 2018, the year “The Velvet Revolution” toppled “The Old Corrupt Guard” and Nikol Pashinoglu walked triumphantly to The Office of The Prime Minister of Armenia. 

Of course, Armenia today is not the “Land of Honey and Milk”, and the mighty green dollar does not grow on trees lining up the main streets of Yerevan. Prosperity is limited strictly to the ruling elite, or the “New Guard,” i.e., the long list of oligarchs who plundered the economy under the watchful eyes of PM Pashinoglu, who scratched their backs and, in return, the oligarchs diverted millions of dollars to the multiple charities controlled by Anna Hakobyan, and with some creative accounting the illicit fortune of Pashinyan/Hakobyan ended up in offshore accounts, and not much can be traced back to the “First Family of Armenia”. 

Today (Nov. 27, 2023), very gloomy figures about the widespread poverty in Armenia were released. A close scrutiny of the numbers sends chills down your spine once you realize the dire circumstances affecting 1 out of 4 Armenians living in Armenia. The “official” poverty rate in Armenia is 24.8% (2022), based on figures released by Armenia’s National Statistical Committee, an institution that relied on World Bank methodology to tabulate the final figures. 

Of course, not all international institutions studying poverty globally agree with the creative accounting used by Armenia’s National Statistical Committee. World Food Programme (WFP) believes that the poverty rate is 28%, and others claim that almost one-third of Armenia’s population has been victimized by poverty.

Unfortunately, poverty is not the only scourge affecting the Armenian society under Pashinoglu’s rule. 

Source: Noubar Serabian

By Harut Sassounian,

Last week, I was asked by Alpha News TV to comment on the U.S. Senate’s decision, by a unanimous vote of 100 to 0, to suspend for two years Pres. Joe Biden’s authority to waive Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act, which prohibits providing assistance to Azerbaijan. Should the House of Representatives also approve this bill, it would then go to the President for his signature which would make it a law. Since 1992, all U.S. presidents, including Pres. Biden in the last two years, have waived Section 907, thus providing tens of millions of dollars of aid to Azerbaijan.

The Senate’s decision angered Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry which described it as a blow to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and cancelled its participation in the planned Washington talks between the foreign ministers of the two countries on Nov. 20.

During my interview with Alpha News, I stated that not a single U.S. Senator objected to the anti-Azerbaijan bill, despite Azerbaijan hiring multiple large lobbying firms to defend its interests in Washington. This means that Azerbaijan has wasted tens of millions of dollars in the last two decades paying for these useless lobbying firms. I would like to add that the person directly responsible for overseeing the work of these lobbying firms is Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Washington, Khazar Ibrahim. Therefore, any government that becomes aware of the waste of such large amounts of money would immediately fire its Ambassador. If Pres. Aliyev does not dismiss Amb. Ibrahim, then he himself would be just as responsible for the waste of millions of dollars on worthless lobbying firms which have not been able to convince a single Senator out of 100 to vote in favor of Azerbaijan’s interests.

Within days of my interview with Alpha News, Azerbaijan’s first English language newspaper, AzerNews, published a lengthy article titled, “Bribing congressmen, Armenian lobby poses threat to future of Yerevan,” attacking me personally for saying that Azerbaijan has wasted millions of dollars on lobbying. This is what shameless people do when they accuse others of doing things they are guilty of.

The whole world knows about Azerbaijan’s notorious Caviar Diplomacy and Azerbaijani Laundromat, bribing politicians throughout Europe with billions of dollars to cast votes in favor of Azerbaijan in order to whitewash Azerbaijan’s severe human rights violations and its fraudulent presidential elections.

Shamelessly, AzerNews falsely states that “Armenia’s lobby organizations abroad, pour millions or perhaps billions into the pockets of congressmen, of course, baseless and biased opinions against Azerbaijan will be voiced from the West.”

There are several grave errors in the above sentence. First of all, the Armenian government has not hired a single U.S. lobbying firm simply because it does not have the huge amount of petrodollars that Azerbaijan has which it wastes on lobbying firms in Washington, instead of taking care of its poor people at home. Secondly, Armenian-American organizations do not have millions, let alone billions of dollars to “pour into the pockets of congressmen.” Armenian-Americans do not need to bribe anyone. When your cause is just, you do not need to pay bribes to convince anyone of the truth. Only when you commit massive crimes, as Azerbaijan and Turkey repeatedly do, you need to spend millions and billions of dollars to cover up your crimes.

AzerNews went on to incriminate Azerbaijan, saying that Baku “is not only interested in participating in this auction of finding partnerships that Armenia is lavishly doing now.” Even though the sentence is not grammatically correct, the Azeri writer seems to admit that Azerbaijan is eager to bribe foreign officials. This is a useless statement since Azerbaijan has been bribing foreign officials for years.

Azerbaijan should be the last country in the world to cast aspersions on Armenia or any other country, since Baku is led by a dictator who jails journalists and human rights activists, and his soldiers commit the ugliest war crimes, such as rapes and beheadings. Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh and committed genocide against its Armenian population. Furthermore, Ramil Safarov, an Azeri soldier, during a NATO-sponsored training seminar in Hungary, chopped the head of a sleeping Armenian soldier with an axe. After Pres. Aliyev bribed the Hungarian government to release him from prison, he pardoned him and recognized him as a national hero.

I commend AzerNews for tracking all the way from Baku my interview in Glendale, California, and writing a baseless and false response. The writer of the article, Elnur Enveroglu, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of AzerNews, went to great lengths to find not only my TV interview, but also to translate it from Armenian into English.

On November 22, H.E. Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians received the President of the Republic of Iraq Abd Al Latif Jamal Rashid, on an official visit to Armenia, at the Holy See of Etchmiadzin.

Welcoming the visit of the delegation led by the Iraqi President to the spiritual center of all Armenians, His Holiness expressed confidence that the latter’s visit to Armenia will contribute to the rapprochement of relations between the two peoples and the strengthening of interstate ties. Speaking about the Armenian community in Iraq, the Catholicos of All Armenians noted that it makes an important contribution to deepening Armenian-Iraqi relations. In this regard, His Holiness expressed his gratitude to the Iraqi authorities for their attention to the community and its national spiritual life.

During the meeting, the Armenian Patriarch also discussed the military and genocidal actions unleashed by Azerbaijan against Artsakh, as a result of which Artsakh Armenians were forcibly expelled, and presented the security and humanitarian challenges that the country faces.

In turn, Iraqi President Abd Al Latif Jamal Rashid informed that his delegation’s visit to Armenia aims to strengthen and further develop cooperation between the two countries in various fields. The President discussed the current situation in Iraq and the measures taken by the authorities to overcome the existing challenges. On this occasion, the Iraqi president underlined with satisfaction that the Armenian community of Iraq also plays an important role in the development of the country’s progress.