One of its top executives, Karen Baghdasarian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the company has still not received any explanation for the extraordinary measure which he said has disrupted its operations essential for the Armenian agricultural sector.
“Within a day or two they stopped all our trucks in Russian cities and said, ‘The trucks won't move; if you have cargo in them, you can transfer the cargo to other vehicles and take it to its recipients,” said Baghdasarian.
“We have not been officially informed what the problem is,” he said, adding that the effective seizures of the trucks are also “paralyzing” Spayka’s further food shipments and purchases.
The company founded in 2001 is Armenia’s leading producer and exporter of agricultural products grown at its own greenhouses or purchased from farmers across the country. It currently employs about 2,500 people.
Russian government agencies, including the Rosselkhoznadzor agricultural watchdog, have not yet made any public statements on the situation. The Armenian government has not commented on it either.
Late last week, the government’s State Revenue Committee issued a statement urging Armenian food exporters not to do business with dodgy wholesale buyers accused by the Russian authorities of tax evasion. The statement did not name Spayka or any other company.
Baghdasarian said in this regard that Spayka sells agricultural produce mainly to Russian supermarket chains and is not involved in any fraudulent practices. The company has never faced such punitive measures before, he said.
Russia is the main market for agricultural products as well as alcoholic beverages exported by Armenia. In the last few years, Moscow has occasionally and briefly banned some of those exports on sanitary grounds construed by Armenian commentators as Russian retaliation against the Armenian government’s continuing drift to the West.
Earlier this year, senior Russian officials, notably Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, repeatedly warned of severe economic consequences of Yerevan’s declared desire to eventually join the European Union. They said that an EU membership bid would be incompatible with Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union which gives it tariff-free access to the vast Russian market. Overchuk visited Yerevan late last month.