Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

In November 2011, the FOI Center sent an inquiry letter to the director of the «Ashtarak Kat» CJSC, Stepan Aslanyan, and the director of the «Doostr Marianna» LTD, Tigran Vardanyan, asking them to provide information whether the dairy products that the companies produce are made from natural milk or not, and also asking them to provide the list of products which contain natural milk and the list of products which contain milk powder and/or the proportion of the natural milk in their products. When there was no answer received, FOI center sent letter requesting the information to the «Ashtarak Kat» CJSC and «Doostr Marianna» LTD again. As a response to the double request of information, an electronic answer was received from «Doostr Marianna» LTD, according to which the information requested by the FOI center can be found on each product of the company, also, reference was made to the web page of the company. However, the information requested by the FOI center was not found to be listed on the prodiucts nor on the webpage. Thus, the response was considered to be groundless. “Ashtarak Kat” CJSC left unanswered the double information requested letters sent by the FOI center.

The Administrative Court of the Republic of Armenia (Judges Artsrun Mirzoyan and Aghasi Darbinyan), by rejecting to accept the claims of the FOI Center, claimed that these companies are profit-seeking (comercial) enterprises and, thus, “the claims do not correspond to public legal relations...” In another words, the court considered that "Ashtarak-Kat" CJSC and "Doostr Marianna" LTD hold no public significance.
We are informing the judges that refused to accept the claims that the webpage of the State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition (http://competition.am/uploads/resources/Cucak_dominant_for_site_24_11-2011.pdf) contains the list of the business entities in Armenia that have a dominant position in the trade markets. «Ashtarak Kat» CJSC and «Doostr Marianna» LTD are also included in that list and, according to the article 3 of the Republic of Armenia’s law on Freedom of Information, organizations that have a dominant or monopoly position in the trade market are considered to be companies of public importance and are information holders.

We are reporting that the Freedom of Information Center (FOI Center) is preparing to appeal the decisions of the Administrative Court of the Republic of Armenia.

Freedom of Information Center (FOI Center)
«Aravot» newspaper