Anna Hakobyan on the Controversy Surrounding the List of Donors to Her Foundations

The chairwoman of the board of trustees of the "My Step" and "City of Smiles" charitable foundations, Anna Hakobyan, the wife of the Prime Minister of Armenia, wrote on her Facebook page: "The list of donors to the 'City of Smiles' foundation and the amount of their donations has been posted on the foundation's website since the first days of November. As far as I understand, for some reason, an individual stumbled upon this, made a post about it on Facebook, and turned it into one of the top topics in the news these days. Moreover, all media reports start with the following sentence: '...the foundation has published the list of donors,' which may create the impression among people that the list was published today or yesterday.

And.... What kind of analyses, suspicions about shady deals, and transparent references to the fulfillment/non-fulfillment of donations and tax obligations are in the air! Everything is normal; the list has been published, and we have adopted an extremely transparent approach specifically for this process, allowing journalists to study it under a microscope so that everyone knows about us—who we received money from, what we did with it, etc. It is not normal that if some individual had not accidentally discovered this list four months later, this very important topic would have remained inaccessible to the Armenian media landscape.

As for donations, all the major donations listed were made at the gala dinner held at the Marriott hotel at the end of July or shortly thereafter. Therefore, in this case, all analyses and suspicions about shady deals are about 7 months delayed. For journalists specifically, the list of donors to the 'My Step' foundation will also be posted on that foundation's website when it is ready. Everyone will benefit if they are the first to discover that 'treasure.' It is not worth leaving our top news topic to the hopes of individual citizens or coincidences."