One of the oldest and most expensive boutiques in Yerevan – ‘Milano’ (founded in 1995) is closed since March 10, when representatives of the Service for Compulsory Execution of Judicial Acts alienated the whole property of the first floor of the three-storied trading hall.

The owner of the shop considered this an act of “seizure.”

On March 11, ‘Milano’s owner Hovhannes Ghukasyan and his assistants made an agreement with the employees of the Service for Compulsory Execution of Judicial Acts to make an inventory of the property of the second floor and to remove it from the shop.

According to a court decision, the territory of the trade hall on 4 Abovyan Street was declared a zone of prevailing public interest since 2007. The owner of the territory was considered to be Avo F. M. H. Co., Ltd., the head of which is Diaspora-Armenian Avedis Karagulian. Karagulian told ArmeniaNow that he could not say now what he is planning to construct in the alienated territory.

Ghukasyan, in his turn, told ArmeniaNow, that on March 9, they received a notice on the property alienation; however, they did not manage to make an appropriate inventory of the property and remove the expensive European clothes from the shop before the arrival the Service for Compulsory Execution of Judicial Acts representatives.

“There was an impression as if the Service for Compulsory Execution of Judicial Acts representatives hastily, negligently, barbarously and without making an inventory of the property stuffed these expensive clothes into boxes designed for cigarette and sugar sacks to terrorize us,” Ghukasyan says.

Ghakasyan refuses to abandon territory that belongs to him, because, as he says, he does not agree with the compensation he is offered. According to Ghukasyan, Karagulian offers him a compensation of about $521,000 for only the first floor (125 square meters) of the three-storied building. Ghukasyan cannot get the money transferred to the courts’ deposit account by Karagulian, because he (Ghukasyan) has unpaid taxes of about 17 million drams (about $44,700). Ghukasyan says that these tax payments are “drawn figures,” and he believes that his property is being overtaken by an “influential” owner.