Armenia awards $9 million COP17 contracts to firm in $1.3 million repayment dispute

By Lia Avagyan

Armenia has awarded nearly $9 million in COP17 contracts to a company that is disputing a government demand to return more than $1.3 million from an earlier publicly funded concert.

The government signed contracts worth about 3.5 billion drams, or more than $8.9 million, with Doping Space to help organize COP17 in Yerevan. The conference, formally the 17th meeting of the parties to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, is scheduled for Oct. 19-30, 2026, according to the convention’s official website.

The contracts were awarded through a single-source procurement procedure. Doping Space will receive 90 percent of their value in advance, according to an investigation by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

The company will provide transportation, audiovisual and advertising services, an information campaign and equipment for the conference.

The new contracts were awarded while the Education, Science, Culture and Sports Ministry was seeking about 534 million drams, or $1.36 million, from Doping Space following a Jennifer Lopez concert held in Yerevan in 2025.

The ministry says the amount includes 502 million drams in savings from the concert, 7.8 million drams over delayed financial reports and a separate contractual payment of 24.3 million drams.

Doping Space has not returned the money and has challenged the ministry’s demand.

“We consider this money to be savings that must be returned to the state,” Education, Science, Culture and Sports Minister Zhanna Andreasyan said in an interview published by Infocom on Saturday.

“Their position differs from ours,” she said. “We are now in a process where we will either reach a mutual agreement on returning the money or there will be court proceedings.”

Andreasyan defended the decision to award the new contracts to the company, saying the dispute concerned a specific issue and should not be used to judge its overall operations.

“We have a specific problem, and we are working on that specific problem through legal channels,” she said.

From Snoop Dogg to Jennifer Lopez

The government transferred 2.3 billion drams, then worth about $6 million, to Doping Space in 2023 to organize a Snoop Dogg concert in Yerevan.

Doping Space had been established in July 2023, about a month before the government approved the funding. The full amount was transferred in advance.

The concert was scheduled for Sept. 23, 2023, but was postponed after Azerbaijan launched a military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh four days earlier. It did not take place in 2024.

The contract was later amended, and Jennifer Lopez performed in Yerevan under the same program in 2025.

The ministry recognized 1.816 billion drams in expenses related to the Lopez concert and demanded the return of the remaining 502 million drams as unspent funds. Information released by the ministry does not make clear whether the money was not spent or whether some reported expenses were rejected as insufficiently documented.

Andreasyan said the government’s priority had been to ensure that an international star performed in Armenia rather than become embroiled in litigation with the organizer.

“The government’s or the ministry’s objective was not to get caught up in court proceedings and disputes,” she said. “The objective was to organize a world star’s performance in Armenia, and that took place.”

Bank guarantee waived

Before the Lopez concert, the ministry waived a bank guarantee that could have allowed the state to collect unmet financial obligations from a bank, according to RFE/RL.

The original contract also imposed a penalty of 0.5 percent of the 2.3 billion-dram payment for each working day of delay. RFE/RL estimated that penalties for the first eight months of 2025 alone could have exceeded 1.6 billion drams.

The ministry did not collect those penalties.

Asked why the guarantee was waived and the penalties were not imposed, Andreasyan said the government’s objective was to organize the performance and resolve the situation positively. She did not address either question separately.

Andreasyan said all the ministry’s actions complied with Armenian law. She added that future concerts by international performers should be organized through competitive tenders and under revised procedures.