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Gagik Muradyan — Director, SNCO «Cash Register Implementation Office» (confirmed 2013)

Director of the State Non-Commercial Organisation «Հսկիչ-դրամարկղային մեքենաների ներդրման գրասենյակ» — the institutionally cross-domain body that both certified cash-register models AND imported / sold / serviced them — confirmed in role as of August 2013 by Hetq investigative reporting. Tenure start and end dates not on the public record. Famous one-line quote: refused to disclose the import price of cash registers his SNCO was selling at 369,600 drams to small business.

Last reviewed Jun 2, 2026

Gagik Muradyan

Former
Armenian:
Գագիկ Մուրադյան
Russian:
Гагик Мурадян

First and only confirmed director of the SNCO «Cash Register Implementation Office» on the public record. Hetq named him in role on 2 August 2013, when its reporter asked about the import price of cash registers the SNCO sold to taxpayers at a regulated 369,600 drams; Muradyan's verbatim reply — «even if I have the information, of course I won't say» — became the canonical illustration of the conflict-of-interest baked into the SNCO's dual mandate. We could not confirm when his tenure began, when it ended, who succeeded him, or what he did before or after — those gaps are surfaced as open questions below rather than guessed.

Roles

Notes

The August 2013 refusal-to-disclose moment

On 2 August 2013, Hetq published an investigation into how the SNCO was selling new-generation cash registers to large taxpayers at 369,600 drams — a regulated price set by the state itself. The reporter asked Muradyan, as Director, the obvious question: what was the SNCO actually paying for these devices on import? Muradyan's response was the verbatim line **«Եթե նույնիսկ տեղեկություն էլ ունեմ, իհարկե չեմ ասի»** («Even if I have the information, of course I won't say»). A follow-up Hetq piece a few weeks later — once the SNCO had been authorised to extend the same mandatory-purchase arrangement to small and medium enterprises — characterised the move as «առանց որևէ իրավական հիմքի» (without any legal basis), noting the SME-extension decision omitted the compensatory rationale that had been used to justify the large-taxpayer arrangement. The quote captures, in one sentence, the conflict-of-interest baked into the SNCO's institutional design: when the regulator IS the seller, the regulator can refuse the transparency questions the seller would otherwise face.

Why this thin profile is on the site at all: the SNCO's cross-domain dilemma

fiscal.am profiles individuals where their public role illuminates the regulatory ecosystem. Most other person pages on this site are senior regulators (current and former SRC chairs) or commerce-side executives (Ralph Yirikian, the long-time VivaCell-MTS GM). Muradyan is the first profile where the institutional setting itself made the person inherently cross-domain. The SNCO he led had a dual mandate baked into its founding decree N 1419-Ն: certify cash-register models (regulator function) AND import / sell / service them to taxpayers (market-participant function). For nine years, one office did both. The conflict was not a side-effect; it was the design. Whoever directed that SNCO at any given moment was simultaneously the chief regulator of the cash-register industry and its biggest seller. The 2019 liberalisation cut back the market role, and the December 2021 dissolution closed the office entirely — both moves explicit acknowledgments that the cross-domain design was untenable. Muradyan in 2013, refusing the transparency question, is the freezeframe of that untenability.

Open questions on this profile

Surfaced honestly so a future contributor can fill them. **1.** When was Muradyan appointed Director? The SNCO was created by decree N 1419-Ն of 8 November 2012; the directorship is normally appointed by a separate Prime Minister's or government decision. We could not locate that decision. **2.** When did his tenure end? Was he still Director at the February-March 2019 liberalisation, or had he already been replaced? Was he Director on 30 December 2021 when the SNCO was dissolved? **3.** Biographical record: birth year, education, ethnic / regional origin, pre-2013 career — none on the public record we could reach. **4.** Post-SNCO trajectory: did he go to the private cash-register sector (a critical regulator-to-business pipeline question), to another state SNCO, back to government, or out of the industry? **5.** Were there other named directors of the SNCO across its 2012-2021 life? A 9-year SNCO typically goes through 2-4 directors; we identified one. Primary-source paths not yet exploited: azdarar.am state gazette (where appointment decisions are published), arlis.am decree texts for both the founding N 1419-Ն and the December 2021 dissolution, e-register.moj.am legal-entity profile for the SNCO, and Wayback Machine snapshots of petekamutner.am-era SRC announcements.

Sources