YEREVAN — After yearlong negotiations with Moscow, the Armenian authorities appear to have agreed to drop criminal proceedings against Armenia’s national railway network managed by the Russia Railways (RZD) giant.
RZD runs the network called South Caucasus Railway (SCR) in line with a 30-year management contract signed with the former Armenian government in 2008. The deal committed it to modernizing Armenia’s disused and rundown railway infrastructure with substantial investments.
An Armenian law-enforcement agency raided the SCR offices in Yerevan and confiscated company documents in August 2018. The Investigative Committee alleged afterwards that SCR inflated the volume of its capital investments by 400 million drams ($830,000).
Both SCR and its state-owned Russian operator strongly denied any wrongdoing. Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Vladimir Tokarev complained in…
