Black money is flowing into the Armenian banking system now, the ex-chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) and member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) Bagrat Asatryan stated at a Nov 22 conference of the occasion of Bank Employee Day.

“In 1996, when the economy was just recovering we proud that foreign capital constituted 50% of our banking capital, with 70 to 80 percent of this capital being European capital. We are saying the same now, but Russian capital,” Asatryan said. He stressed that Russian capital is only “15 years old in contrast to, for example, British capital.”

Russian capital is not transparent either, Asatryan said. He proposed investigating the origin of funds involved in the construction of Northern Avenue in Yerevan. “This is mainly black money. This is windfall money. It is most dangerous when banks have such money as their basic capital,” Asatryan said.

The shadow and oligarchic system account for the instability of the Armenian banking system. “The shadow hinders the banking system’s development. We have so many oligarchs, but we have not a single banker oligarch. Our oligarchs are mostly banana-traders. This is the real tragedy of our economy,” the oppositionist said.