HEADS OF "ROYAL ARMENIA" COMPANY ARE ACQUITED AND SET FREE FROM COURT HALL

Noyan Tapan
Jul 17 2007

YEREVAN JULY 17, NOYAN TAPAN. The Court of First Instance of the
Kentron and Nork-Marash communities of Yerevan with judge Pargev
Ohanian at the head on July 16 made a decision to bring in a verdict of
not guilty for Gagik Hakobian, the co-holder of the "Royal Armenia"
company, and Aram Ghazarian, the Deputy Director of the company,
who were set free from the court hall.

It should be mentioned that this criminal case was filed on March
10, 2005.

Gagik Hakobian and Aram Ghazarian were put under arrest in the
seventh month of the preliminary investigation. The verdict was
envisaged to be published on June 28 this year. However, the court
made a sudden decision to restart the trial of this case in order to
make an additional investigation of the conclusions of examinations
of judicial criminology, judicial accountancy and judicial economics.

According to the decision of the court, the charges of simulating
invoices and purposefully evading the payment of taxes through them,
smuggling, making the incomes received in a criminal way legal, that is
to say, money laundering, as well as that of seizing the property of
the "FIG" ("Federal Investigation Group") company through deception
were brought against the defendants by the criminal prosecution
body on the bases of assumptions. The court found that the deeds the
defendants are charged with have not been proved and are groundless.

In addition to this, the investigation of the originals of the
invoices, as well as of their copies and other documents examined
by the hearing has revealed that there are discrepancies between
the copies of the invoices presented to the investigation by Vache
Petrosian, a representative of the "Federal Investigation Group",
and the data of other documents concerning goods. According to
the court, Vache Petrosian presented not one of the three invoices,
which were given to a person, who transported the load of the "Federal
Investigation Group" company, where the real price and seals of goods
should be seen, but the xerocopies of a version of that document
with changed data. Thus, he created artificial proof in order to
charge the defendants with the committment of especially serious
crimes. Therefore, the court decided to turn to the RA Prosecutor
General with a petition to file a criminal prosecution towards
V. Petrosian, who is a witness of the case, on the indications of the
first, second, and third points of Article 333 of the RA Criminal
Code for giving false testimony and creating artificial proof for
mercenary motives and thus charging the person with a serious crime.