YEREVAN, July 15. /ARKA/. Leader International Money Transfer System was surprised to learn that the Central Bank of Armenia ruled July 11 to suspend its operation in Armenia, Elena Yermoshina, a public affairs officer for Artisan Group who is also a press officer for Leader, told ARKA News Agency on Friday.

On July 7, the central bank’s board stripped the Leader from its right to run activity in the country, since the latter has periodically ceased serving some provincial offices of Armenian banks.

Earlier, in 2008, the regulator prohibited Armenian commercial banks from participating in Western Union because of this system’s refusal to operate money transfers to Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

Yermoshina said that the Leader has ceased serving one of Armenian banks because of technical problems only once since it started cooperating with eight banks in Armenia in 2003.

She said that at the moment of the central bank’s decision, the Leader was negotiating for resumption of the ceased operation.

The system’s administration expresses hope that all the controversies, which have triggered this imbroglio, would be settled soon.

Christina Galstyan, chief of the Converse Bank’s division in charge of serving clients, said that the leader was the most available and convenient system and expressed hope that cooperation with it would resume. She said it would be very difficult to adapt clients to another system.

Ruben Khachatryan, deputy director general of Areximbank – Gazprombank group, spoke in favor of the Leader as well. He said the system was functioning properly, and it was attractive for its prices.

“I don’t understand what happened,” he said. “We learned about termination of the Leader’s activity from the central bank.”

Ani Saribekyan, an officer at Artsakh bank’s division in charge of services, said that the Leader’s share in the total amount of international transfers was about 70-75%, while the share of Migom system was 20%, and the remaining share belongs to Anelik and MoneyGram.

That is why she fears that termination of Leader system’s activity will have an adverse impact on money transfers operated via Artsakhbank.

She said that Artsakhbank is left with no option but to send its clients to other commercial banks for money transfers arousing their displeasure.

Armenian commercial banks participate in 17 international money transfer systems - Money Gram, Anelik, Unistream, Bistraya Pochta, Interexpress, Contact, Migom, Express Money, Faster, Blizko, Zolotaya Korona etc.

The Leader offers money transfer and bill payment services. The system provides services in 130,000 spots in 110 countries. The Leader has more than 500 business partners (banks, financial companies, mobile telecommunication operators as well as insurance and travel companies) in Russia and other countries.--0--