Badasyan Received About $16,000 in Bonuses Over 6 Months

In 2019, the Minister of Justice of Armenia received a bonus of 13,598,570 AMD, of which approximately 8 million AMD or around $16,000 was received by Rustam Badasyan. This information was provided by the Armenian Ministry of Justice in response to an inquiry from Analitik.am.

The source reminded that until June 2019, the Minister of Justice was Artak Zeynalyan, after which Rustam Badasyan took over.

Badasyan's monthly bonuses were consistently 1,342,830 AMD, except for July and October when he received about 1,200,000 AMD in bonuses. Notably, the minister's salary is 1,500,000 AMD, which means that every month Badasyan receives between 2,700,000 AMD and 2,850,000 AMD from the state budget.

In 2019, the bonuses for the deputy ministers totaled approximately 42 million AMD, with the first deputy minister receiving 13,406,400 AMD, equivalent to about $28,100. Interestingly, in March 2019, the first deputy minister received a bonus of 3,222,800 AMD. Another deputy minister also received over 3 million AMD in bonuses during March.

Of the minister's three deputies, one received bonuses totaling 8,663,517 AMD in 2019, with the highest in February and March amounting to 1,124,380 AMD, while the lowest was in December at 673,407 AMD. Another deputy's bonuses amounted to 11,304,902 AMD, with the highest in March exceeding 3 million AMD, and the lowest in July at 471,385 AMD. The bonuses of the other deputy minister totaled 9,790,950 AMD in 2019.

The total amount of bonuses for the minister and the four deputy ministers in 2019 reached 56,764,339 AMD, equivalent to about $119,000. The highest bonuses were paid in March, totaling 10,083,300 AMD, while the lowest were in November at 4,335,970 AMD.

In 2019, the total bonuses given to employees of the Ministry of Justice amounted to approximately 466 million AMD, with about 60 million allocated from saved salary funds, around 320 million from extra-budgetary resources, and approximately 85 million AMD allocated for rewards based on performance evaluations of civil service employees. The ministry reported that, on average, 295 employees were rewarded monthly in 2019.

It is noteworthy that Hetq.am previously uncovered that, upon a secret instruction from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the salaries of ministers, deputy ministers, and the chief secretaries of ministries have significantly increased. This directive was issued in July of the previous year. Without amending the law, the minister's salary has been doubled to 1.5 million AMD.