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    Categories: 2019

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 01/08/2019

                                        Tuesday, 

Indicted Businessman Seeks Medical Treatment Abroad

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Businessman Samvel Mayrapetian at the official opening of his 
Toyota-Yerevan car dealership in Yerevan, 23 June 2009.

A prominent Armenian businessman prosecuted on corruption charges has appealed 
to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after law-enforcement authorities 
in Yerevan refused to allow him to undergo medical treatment abroad.

The millionaire businessman, Samvel Mayrapetian, was arrested and charged with 
“assisting in bribery” in October. Armenia’s Special Investigative Service 
(SIS) has still not publicized details of the accusations. The tycoon had 
greatly benefited from close ties with the country’s former governments.

An Armenian court freed Mayrapetian on bail on December 27. He has remained in 
a Yerevan hospital since then.

Immediately after his release Mayrapetian requested the SIS’s permission to 
leave for Germany for health reasons. The law-enforcement body refused to 
return his passport.

Mayrapetian’s lawyers responded by asking the ECHR on January 2 to order the 
Armenian authorities to allow his treatment in a German clinic.

The lawyers said on Monday that the Strasbourg court has accepted the lawsuit 
and asked the Armenian Justice Ministry to explain the investigators’ refusal 
to let the suspect leave the country. A ministry spokesperson confirmed the 
information on Tuesday.

One of the lawyers, Karen Batikian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that his 
client is suffering from a life-threatening form of pancreatitis that requires 
urgent surgery. He insisted that Armenian hospitals lack modern equipment 
needed for such an operation.

“His life is really in very serious danger,” said Batikian. “We have documents 
signed by doctors certifying that this disease cannot be cured in Armenia.”

Batikian said later in the day that the SIS has handed the passport back to 
Mayrapetian but made clear that he will still not be allowed to fly to Germany.

Mayrapetian is one of Armenia’s leading real estate developers who also owns a 
national TV channel and a car dealership. His company was involved in a 
controversial redevelopment of old districts in downtown Yerevan during the 
1998-2008 rule of former President Robert Kocharian. Some media outlets for 
years linked Kocharian’s elder son Sedrak to the Toyota dealership.

Kocharian is currently held in pretrial detention, having been charged in 
connection with the deadly breakup of post-election opposition protests in 
March 2008. He denies the accusations as politically motivated.



Armenian, Azeri FMs Set For More Talks


U.S. - Foreign Ministers Elmar Mammadyarov (R) of Azerbaijan and Zohrab 
Mnatsakanian (second from right) of Armenia pose for a photograph with the OSCE 
Minsk Group co-chairs in New York, 26 September 2018.

International mediators are trying to organize another meeting of Armenia’s and 
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministers later this month, the Armenian Foreign Ministry 
said on Tuesday.

“The [U.S., Russian and French] co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have proposed 
a meeting of the foreign ministers in January,” the ministry spokeswoman, Anna 
Naghdalian, told the Armenpress news agency. “An announcement on the meeting 
will be made in a coordinated manner.”

Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar 
Mammadyarov held three face-to-face meetings in the second half of 2018.

According to the co-chairs, at their most recent talks held in Milan on 
December 5 Mnatsakanian and Mammadyarov pledged to “work intensively to promote 
a peaceful resolution of the conflict and to further reduce tensions.”

“They agreed to meet again in early 2019 under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk 
Group Co-Chairs for this purpose and in order to facilitate high-level talks,” 
the mediating troika said in a December 6 statement.

Both ministers described the Milan meeting as “useful.” Mammadyarov said that 
it resulted in a rare “mutual understanding” between the two parties to the 
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The ministers met in the Italian city the day before Armenian Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke to each other at a 
summit of ex-Soviet states held in Russia.

Pashinian and Aliyev also had a brief conversation during the previous CIS 
summit held in Tajikistan in September. There has been a significant decrease 
in ceasefire violations in the Karabakh conflict zone since then.

“The year 2019 will give a new impetus to the Armenia-Azerbaijan 
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process,” Aliyev wrote on his Twitter page 
on December 14.

Pashinian tweeted two hours later that a Karabakh settlement “remains a top 
priority” for Armenia.



Court Approves Fresh Arrest Warrant Over 2008 Crackdown

        • Anush Muradian

Armenia- Vahagn Harutyunian, the former head of a criminal investigation into 
the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.

A Yerevan court has approved a fresh arrest warrant against the man who led a 
criminal investigation into the 2008 post-election violence in Armenia during 
former President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule.

The former official, Vahagn Harutiunian, was charged in late October with 
forging factual evidence to cover up the Armenian army’s involvement in the 
deadly breakup of opposition protests staged in the wake of a disputed 
presidential election. He left Armenia for Russia in July, ostensibly to 
receive medical treatment, and apparently remains there.

On November 2, a court of first instance in the Armenian capital allowed the 
Special Investigative Service (SIS) to arrest Harutiunian pending 
investigation. The Court of Appeals annulled the arrest warrant on December 13, 
however.

Shortly afterwards, Harutiunian was also charged with two counts of abuse of 
power. According to an SIS spokeswoman, Marina Ohanjanian, the district court 
again sanctioned the former SIS investigator’s arrest on December 30.

Harutiunian rejected the initial accusation leveled against him as “unfounded, 
illegal and fabricated” when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian service by phone on 
November 1. He insisted that his team of investigators never found any evidence 
of illegal actions taken by the Armenian military during the 2008 unrest, which 
left eight protesters and two police servicemen dead.

The SIS completely changed the official version of events following last 
spring’s mass protests that toppled Sarkisian. It now says that Sarkisian’s 
outgoing predecessor, Robert Kocharian, illegally ordered army units into the 
streets of Yerevan before declaring a state of emergency on March 1, 2008.

Kocharian was arrested on December 7 on charges of overthrowing Armenia’s 
constitutional order. The former president denies them, saying that Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian is waging a political “vendetta” against him.

Pashinian was a key speaker at the 2008 protests. The former journalist 
subsequently spent about two years in prison for organizing what the SIS used 
to describe as “mass disturbances.” He strongly denied those charges.


New Parliament Majority ‘Wary’ Of Opposition Party

        • Gayane Saribekian

Armenia - Gevorg Gorgisian (L) and other election candidates of the Bright 
Armenia party campaign in Yerevan, November 26, 2018.

An opposition politician claimed on Tuesday that Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian’s government is too scared to cede a leadership position in Armenia’s 
newly elected parliament to his party.

Pashinian’s My Step alliance named the incoming speaker of the National 
Assembly and two of his three deputies ten days after winning the December 9 
parliamentary elections by a landslide.

The Armenian constitution reserves the third post of deputy speaker for a 
representative of the parliamentary opposition. It will therefore be given to 
one of the two other political parties that have entered the new parliament: 
Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and Bright Armenia. They will have 26 and 18 
parliament seats respectively.

Pashinian indicated on Monday that My Step lawmakers will likely vote for a 
candidate of the BHK because the latter is the second largest parliamentary 
force.

Gevorg Gorgisian, a senior Bright Armenia lawmaker, dismissed Pashinian’s 
explanation. “It’s a political decision, and I think it’s wrong to cover it up 
with different wording,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “They should just 
come out and openly say that they have decided to gift that post to the BHK.”

Gorgisian insisted that his party will be a “strong opposition” with or without 
controlling the post of vice-speaker. “Maybe they are scared of further 
strengthening Bright Armenia by giving it [power] levers,” he said of the 
parliament majority.

Bright Armenia, Pashinian’s Civil Contract party and another party made up the 
Yelk alliance that was in opposition to the country’s former government. 
Pashinian toppled it in May after weeks of mass protests organized by him. 
Bright Armenia declined to join the protest movement.



Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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