We have now had a translation of the Deed of Assignment (commonly know as “the WILL” of Garabed Melkonian) online for over two months.

What does it actually say? 

To a person with almost no legal background it actually says a lot, and in very simple and unambiguous language that is not open to interpretation.

In short this Deed of 28/12/1925 (11am) says that it cancels the arrangements of the previous 2 previous Deeds of Gift and sets up a set of new arrangements in order to carry on the mission of MEI and “to ensure their [2 Melkonian schools known as ‘Melkonian Establishments’] continued existence”.

The mission of MEI, with which Garabed Melkonian tasks the AGBU with, is not ‘azkabahbanoum’, but ‘to ensure the education of poor young Armenians’ (see Clause VII).

These new arrangements are very simple but very specific:  Garabed Melkonian assigns a substantial amount of property (all his factories, stocks, lands in Egypt etc) to AGBU Lausanne, with the instructions that the AGBU liquidate said property and transform these into securities to be deposited “half in the bank of England and the other half in the United States Federal Bank in Washington, or in any other bank held to be secure by the Armenian General Benevolent Union and will there be formed into a trust”.

This Trust is to be called “Melkonian Fund”.

Details of the assigned properties is listed is listed in detail (but he does not give MEI or any right to sell its lands to AGBU) and forms a total of EŁ425,092 and 475/000 (including Net Debtors) [I guess Aznive Papazian’s accounting lessons did pay off after all]. 

Let us not worry about how much that money is worth today for teh moment, but let’s pay attention to this point: “Only the interest and income from this capital will be devoted to and used in the service of the above described goals”.

Garabed Melkonian also arranges for the following minor annual payments from the interest generated:

   EŁ5000 to be paid to him till the end of his life

   EŁ1000 to the Armenian Patriarchy of Constantinople

   EŁ1000 to the Armenian Patriarchy of Jerusalem

   EŁ3000 to Armenian University of Yerevan. 

After the reinvestment of all this wealth into the banks, the only right given to the AGBU is that of appointing the MEI Board of Directors.

In case, if AGBU goes bankrupt or cannot support the school, Etchmiadzin is asked to appoint a new board of directors, and the Banks holding the invested wealth are specifically instructed to start paying the interests to the new Board of Directors in order to continue running the schools as normal.

Nowhere in this Deed of assignment does it say that the property of MEI of around 32 deunum (42,810 m² in Cypriot deunums and 80,000 m² in Egyptian deunums) is assigned to the AGBU.

MEI belongs to the ‘Melkonian Fund’! – which is supposed to remain untouched even if AGBU goes bankrupt!

Neither does this document give any right to the AGBU to sell any of MEI’s lands nor does this document give any right to the AGBU to touch any of the invested wealth in ‘Melkonian Fund’ – that fund should have stayed intact in accordance with this agreement.

Additionally and most importantly it does not give the AGBU the right to spend any of the interest from the Melkonian Fund on anything but the MEI and specific minor arrangements.

So what does this mean? 

It means that the AGBU CB decided to bully the wrong fellas – the Melkoniantsis; and now they will have to get a lot of old dusty archives out – because they will be in serious trouble the moment that Melkoniantsis take them to court.

They will have to show exactly how they have been spending the interests from the Melkonian Fund in Lausanne in the last 78 years.

They will also have to show us how come all that is left of Melkonian Fund is a miserable $5,500,000, while it should have been around $1,400,000,000. But this is all peanuts, because this deed also means that the sale of Lands in 1980s was totally ILLEGAL !!!