PARIS (Azatutyun) — Dominique de Villepin, a former French prime minister, has resigned from the governing board of an underperforming state fund tasked with attracting foreign investment in Armenia following a management overhaul initiated by the country’s government.
Villepin joined the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) two months after it was set up by the government in May 2019. The ANIF said at the time that the appointment is part of its efforts to bring together a “world-class Board of Directors” that will help it achieve its goals. It attracted only one more board member, Italian investment banking consultant Isidoro Lucciola, however.
The fund’s track record has also been less than impressive. It claims to have attracted only $210 million in foreign direct investment in the Armenian economy over the last four-and-a-half years.
Over 95 percent of that money is due to be invested by an Abu Dhabi-based company contracted in 2021 to build Armenia’s first big solar power plant. The project appears to have fallen well behind schedule.
In a statement over the weekend, the ANIF announced that the Ministry of Economy appointed three new board members, all of them Armenian government officials, who promptly voted to fire the fund’s executive director, David Papazian. One of those officials, Deputy Economy Minister Ani Ispirian, also replaced Villepin as chairman.
The statement gave no reason for these moves. It said that both Villepin, who had served as France’s prime minister from 2005-2007, and Lucciola resigned as board members “after this decision of the Ministry of Economy.” The two foreign members of ANIF’s Investment Committee, Khaled Helioui and Michael Thompson, also tendered their resignations.
