Friday,
Kocharian Not Responsible For March 2008 Deaths, Says Babayan
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- Samvel Babayan, a retired army general, at a news conference in
Yerevan, .
Former President Robert Kocharian did not order security forces to shoot and
kill opposition protesters in Yerevan in 2008, Samvel Babayan,
Nagorno-Karabakh’s former top military commander, said on Friday.
Babayan questioned the fairness and legality of Kocharian’s continuing
pre-trial detention on charges stemming from a post-election crackdown on the
Armenian opposition. He argued that nobody has been charged so far in the
deaths of eight protesters and two police servicemen in vicious street clashes
that broke out on March 1, 2008.
The violence followed the forcible dispersal of nonstop opposition protests
against official results of the February 2008 presidential election which gave
victory to Serzh Sarkisian, Kocharian’s longtime ally and preferred successor.
Both men are natives and former wartime leaders of Karabakh.
“We need to know who ordered, who carried out those killings and how it all
happened,” Babayan told a news conference. “Has anything been solved on that
score? No.”
“I am sure that the order was not issued by [Kocharian,]” insisted Babayan. He
said that Kocharian was “in the process of handover” of power to Sarkisian and
therefore could not have tried to cling to power at any cost.
“The investigating team has officially stated that [Kocharian] has nothing to
do with the killings,” he went on. “If he has nothing to do, why are you
prosecuting him? For violating the constitutional, they say. I say, ‘OK, bring
the case to court so we can see what it’s all about.’”
Kocharian, who completed his second and final presidential term in April 2008,
was arrested in December on charges of illegally using Armenian army units
against supporters of Levon Ter-Petrosian, the main opposition candidate in the
disputed presidential ballot. He denies the charges as politically motivated.
Babayan, 53, was appointed as the commander of Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army
shortly after Kocharian became the unrecognized republic’s leader in 1992. The
two men are thought to have maintained a cordial rapport even after Babayan was
arrested in 2000 for allegedly masterminding a botched attempt on the life of
the next Karabakh president, Arkady Ghukasian.
The once powerful general was released from prison in 2004. He challenged
Sarkisian after the latter succeeded Kocharian as Armenia’s president.
In March 2017, Babayan was arrested on charges of illegal arms acquisition and
money laundering which he strongly denied. A court in Yerevan subsequently
sentenced him to six years in prison.
Armenia’s Court of Cassation overturned the guilty verdict in June 2018,
releasing Babayan from prison. The decision came more than a month after
Sarkisian was overthrown in a popular uprising led by Nikol Pashinian, the
current Armenian prime minister.
Babayan, who now wants to run in Karabakh’s next presidential election due in
2020, on Friday drew parallels between the criminal charges brought against him
and Kocharian. “When they arrested me, they said I smuggled a rocket or a
nuclear bomb from Georgia,” he said. “It turned out later that I didn’t smuggle
anything from anywhere.”
Parliament Rejects Import Tariff Sought By Tsarukian
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia -- A cement plant in Ararat.
The National Assembly approved on Friday a government bill which the opposition
Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) said is not far-reaching enough to protect
domestic manufacturers of cement against cheap cement imports from neighboring
Iran.
The parliament’s pro-government majority refused to amend the bill amid
mounting political tensions with BHK leader and businessman Gagik Tsarukian,
whose assets include one of Armenia’s two cement plants.
Earlier this year, the Armenian government moved to impose hefty taxes on
imports of much cheaper Iranian cement which more than tripled last year,
threatening continued operations of the Armenian plants. An Armenian parliament
committee on economic issues watered down the relevant government bill on April
12 to ensure that the tariff does not apply to cement clinker, a nodular
material developed before the final stage of cement production and easily
turned into the construction material.
Tsarukian’s Multi Group, which includes the Ararat Tsement plant, denounced the
amendment, saying that it renders the bill meaningless. It said Ararat Tsement
would be able to use cheap Iranian clinker and manufacture cement without the
vast majority of its more than 1,000 workers. Hundreds of them received notices
of termination later on April 12.
The workers responded by going on strike on April 15. They ended the protest
after Tsarukian cancelled the planned layoffs two days later. The tycoon
cautioned at the same time that the clinker tariff sought by him is vital for
the future of the plant located in Ararat, a small town 50 kilometers south of
Yerevan.
Armenia -- A cement plant in Hrazdan.
BHK lawmakers echoed those warnings as the parliament debated the bill and
ultimately passed it in the first reading on Friday. “We would lose our cement
production capacities,” one of them, Mikael Melkumian, said.
Minister for Economic Development Tigran Khachatrian and pro-government
deputies insisted, however, that cement imports must not be blocked altogether
because healthy competition between domestic and foreign manufactures will only
benefit Armenia’s construction sector.
Hayk Gevorgian, a senior lawmaker representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian,
also attacked Tsarukian, saying that a company presumably linked to the BHK
leader had privatized Ararat Tsement for just $200,000 in 2002. Gevorgian also
implicitly accused the company of evading taxes until last year’s “velvet
revolution” that brought down the country’s former government.
Tsarukian angrily denied those claims in a rare speech delivered on the
parliament floor. In separate comments to the press, he said that Pashinian’s
bloc will bear responsibility for economic consequences of the bill.
Armenia - Businessman Gagik Tsarukian (L) and protest leader Nikol Pashinian
speak to reporters in Yerevan, 2 May 2018.
Tensions between My Step and the BHK have risen since Tsarukian strongly
criticized the government’s economic policies early this month. Senior
representatives of the two political forces traded fresh accusations in the
parliament on Thursday.
Pashinian and Tsarukian met to discuss the cement dispute and other contentious
issues later on Thursday. Tsarukian afterwards described the meeting as “very
warm” but did not report any concrete agreements.
The BHK backed the Pashinian-led “velvet revolution” as it gained momentum in
April 2018. It joined Pashinian’s first cabinet formed in May. The premier
fired his BHK-affiliated ministers in October, accusing Tsarukian’s party of
secretly collaborating with the former ruling Republican Party.
The BHK finished a distant second in the December 2018 parliamentary elections
which Pashinian’s bloc won by a landslide.
Senior Official Denies Corruption Charges
• Arus Hakobian
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- Davit Sanasarian, head of the State Oversight Service, attends a
cabinet meeting in Yerevan, .
A prominent Armenian government official on Friday laughed off corruption
accusations leveled against him but urged supporters not to undermine the
government when defending his innocence.
“It would have made more sense to suspect me of assassinating [U.S. President
John] Kennedy than of being involved in corruption,” Davit Sanasarian, the
suspended head of the State Oversight Service (SOS), said in a Facebook post.
The National Security Service (NSS) indicted Sanasarian on Thursday as part of
an ongoing investigation into allegedly corrupt practices in government-funded
supplies of medical equipment to hospitals. It arrested two senior SOS
officials in late February, saying that they attempted to cash in on those
supplies.
According to the NSS, Sanasarian abused his powers to help his subordinates
enrich themselves and a private company linked to them.
Sanasarian, whose agency is tasked with combatting financial irregularities in
the public sector, was quick to reject the charges as “fabricated.” Many of his
supporters, among them Western-funded civic activists, defended him on social
media, turning on the NSS and its influential director, Artur Vanetsian, in
particular.
Sanasarian urged them to exercise restraint. “The former regime’s
propagandists, supposedly defending me, are trying to satisfy their penchant
for weakening the [current] authorities,” he wrote. “At any rate, in this
torrent of various kinds of reports, please stop for a while and remember that
state interests are the main thing.”
Sanasarian, 34, is a former opposition and civic activist who had for years
accused Armenia’s former leaders of corruption. He actively participated in
last year’s “velvet revolution,” which succeeded in large measure because of
widespread popular frustration with graft.
Speaking to reporters shortly before being formally charged, Sanasarian said he
does not believe that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian ordered the NSS to
prosecute him for political reasons.
Armenia - Deputy parliament speaker Lena Nazarian talks to journalists,
Yerevan, .
Another Pashinian ally, deputy parliament speaker Lena Nazarian, ruled out on
Friday any political motives behind the high-profile criminal case. “There is
no way anyone can fabricate charges against any official,” she told reporters.
Nazarian also stressed that no member of Pashinian’s political team is immune
to prosecution. “In the fight against corruption, embezzlement and other
abuses, we will not be dividing people into our allies and outsiders,” she said.
Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party (LHK),
likewise suggested that the “surprise” charges brought against Sanasarian are
unlikely to be politically motivated. “It may be [the result of NSS] sloppiness
or I don’t know what,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s political persecution.
We’ll see.”
Press Review
Lragir.am says that corruption charges brought against Davit Sanasarian, the
head of the State Oversight Service (SOS), mark the most serious scandal that
has erupted in Armenia since last year’s regime change. The publication
suggests that the National Security Service (NSS) probably had “quite weighty
grounds” to indict Sanasarian. It wonders whether NSS Director Artur Vanetsian
discussed the high-profile case with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian before the
indictment.In any case, it says, it is quite unusual for a serving high-ranking
Armenian official to be prosecuted on corruption. It also says Pashinian can
seize upon this case to show that he is really serious about combatting
corruption in Armenia.
“Hraparak” wonders whether the new authorities are getting “carried away” in
their fight against corruption and “sacrificing sons of the revolution”
“History is full of many such examples,” the paper says. “But there is also
another truth,” it adds. “Human beings are greedy. As a rule, even the most
ideological individuals succumb to temptations when dealing with lots of money.
No one is born corrupt. One becomes corrupt over time. At first, they accept
small gifts and take bribes in kind. Then come diners, trips, free services,
jobs for friends and relatives. And in the end the time comes for big corrupt
deals, multimillion-dollar kickbacks.”
“Aravot” says that for Gagik Tsarukian and members of his Prosperous Armenia
Party (BHK) the previous Armenian parliaments were a much more comfortable
place than the current one is. “The thing is that since 1995 the [former]
parliaments attracted, apart from politicians, people whose only goal was to
protect their business interests,” explains the paper. “For example … many
members of the former parliament majority were also businesspeople. Whatever
one thinks of it, the 88-strong majority in the current National Assembly came
to the parliament to implement some ideas. Their and the Bright Armenia party’s
function is political.” By contrast, it says, the main mission of BHK deputies
is to further their leader’s business interests.
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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