Friday,
Prosecutors Block Trial Of Former Armenian Officials
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - The main entrance to the Office of the Prosecutor-General.
Armenian prosecutors have refused to pave the way for a trial of former Defense
Minister Seyran Ohanian and four other men facing corruption charges, saying
that a two-year criminal investigation conducted by another law-enforcement
agency was flawed.
The criminal case stems from the 2010 privatization of a hydroelectric plant
located in Armenia’s northern Lori province. It was sold to a private firm for
for 3.6 billion drams ($7.5 million) nearly a decade after being handed over to
the Armenian Defense Ministry.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) said in May 2019 that the privatization
caused “substantial damage” to the state because the DzoraHEK plant was in fact
worth an estimated 8 billion drams ($16.8 million) in 2010. It subsequently
indicted Ohanian, who served as defense minister from 2008 to 2016 and is now a
leading member of the country’s main opposition alliance.
Ohanian has strongly denied any responsibility for the deal, saying that it was
negotiated by the Armenian Energy Ministry and approved by the former government.
Last year the SIS also brought criminal charges against Robert Nazarian, a
former chairman of the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC), and three
other former members of the body regulating utilities. It claimed that they
abused their positions to let DzoraHEK’s new owner make extra profits.
An SIS statement issued in August 2020 implied that the 26-megawatt facility
received privileged treatment from the PSRC because it was owned by “individuals
linked to former President Serzh Sarkisian’s son-in-law Mikael Minasian.”
DzoraHEK was sold to another private company, reportedly owned by
Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian, in 2016.
Nazarian and the three other former utility regulators rejected the accusations
before the law-enforcement agency concluded its investigation this spring.
Armenia - Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian addresses an opposition rally
in Yerevan, March 1, 2021.
A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor-General said on Friday that it has
refused to endorse the results of the probe and has sent the case back to the
SIS for further investigation. He said the SIS must shed more light on “a number
of important circumstances” of the case but did not elaborate.
It also emerged that Borya Chilingarian, an SIS official leading the
investigation, recently offered the five suspects to drop the charges on the
grounds of a statute of limitations. They rejected the offer, however, demanding
that the investigators formally recognize their innocence.
“[Chilingarian] wanted to hear our position about closing or not closing [the
criminal case] because of the statute of limitations,” Ohanian’s lawyer, Karen
Mezhlumian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “After Mr. Ohanian refused, he sent
the indictment to a prosecutor [overseeing the probe] so that the prosecutor
endorses it and sends it to court.”
Chilingarian insisted earlier this year that SIS investigators have collected
sufficient incriminating evidence.
Armenian Opposition Demands Probe Of ‘Illegal’ Troop Withdrawal
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Seyran Ohanian (right) and Artsvik Minasian, parliamentary leaders of
the opposition Hayastan bloc, hold a news conference, Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian must be prosecuted for handing over strategic
areas along Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province to Azerbaijan shortly after
last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the main opposition Hayastan alliance said
on Friday.
Syunik borders the Zangelan and Kubatli districts southwest of Karabakh which
were mostly recaptured by Azerbaijan during the six-week hostilities stopped by
a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November.
Armenian army units and local militias were ordered in December to withdraw from
the rest of those districts as well as territory located along the Soviet-era
Armenian-Azerbaijani border which has never been demarcated due to the Karabakh
conflict.
The troop withdrawal sparked angry protests from local government officials and
ordinary residents of Syunik. They said they can no longer feel safe because
Azerbaijani forces will be stationed dangerously close to their communities,
including the provincial capital Kapan.
Opposition leaders in Yerevan likewise accused Pashinian of hastily and
illegally ceding those lands to Baku. But he insisted that “not a single inch”
of Armenia’s internationally recognized territory was lost.
Pashinian admitted personally ordering the pullout when he spoke in the Armenian
parliament on Wednesday.
Armenia -- Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutiunian (R) visits a new Armenian
army post set up in Syunik province, December 18, 2020.
“I was convinced that if such a decision is not made, military hostilities will
break out there and we will have problems in Syunik,” he said, answering a
question from a Syunik-born lawmaker affiliated with Hayastan.
The opposition bloc seized upon the remarks to demand that the Office of the
Prosecutor-General launch criminal proceedings against the prime minister. The
bloc’s parliamentary leader, Seyran Ohanian, reiterated opposition arguments
that the November truce accord did not call for Armenian withdrawal from the
Armenian-controlled parts of Zangelan and Kubatli.
“Nobody was allowed to issue an oral order to withdraw, especially from areas
which would later become bones of contentions in [Armenian-Azerbaijani] border
demarcation,” Ohanian told a news conference.
The former defense minister said Armenia should have at least retained control
of strategic hills and roads in that border area.
The troop withdrawal left Azerbaijan in control of a 21-kilometer stretch of the
main Armenian highway leading to Iran. Azerbaijani forces deployed there set up
a checkpoint there in August before starting to demand hefty fees from Iranian
trucks using the road.
The move caused serious disruptions in Armenia’s trade with Iran. Pashinian’s
government scrambled to speed up the reconstruction of an alternative Syunik
highway bypassing the Azerbaijani checkpoint.
Armenia Allows COVID-19 Vaccines For Minors
• Narine Ghalechian
Armenia - A man is vaccinated against coronavirus at a mobile vaccination center
in Yerevan, October 24, 2021.
Health authorities in Armenia have allowed children aged 12 and older to get
vaccinated against the coronavirus with their parents’ consent.
Until now only people from age 18 onwards have been eligible for vaccines made
available and increasingly promoted by the Armenian government.
Health Minister Anahit Avanesian announced the expansion of COVID-19
inoculations to younger people late on Thursday amid record numbers of
coronavirus cases and deaths recorded by the authorities. She cited the European
Medicines Agency’s recent recommendation to authorize Moderna’s Spikevax jab for
minors aged 12 to 17.
Avanesian’s decision means that Armenians in that age group can be inoculated
only with Spikevax.
Armenia received the first 50,000 doses of the vaccine manufactured by the U.S.
biotech company from Lithuania early this month. Avanesian said last week that
another 620,000 doses of Spikevax will be donated by Moderna and the government
of Norway.
The Armenian National Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday
morning that at least 20 children have already been vaccinated.
They included a 12-year-old daughter of former Health Minister Arsen Torosian.
Torosian posted on his Facebook page a photograph of her taking her first dose
of Spikevax.
Less than 10 percent of Armenia’s population has been fully vaccinated so far,
the lowest immunization rate in wider Europe. Health officials say this is one
of the reasons for a steady rise in coronavirus cases that began in June and
reached record levels this month.
Almost 2,100 new cases and 43 more deaths caused by COVID-19 were registered in
the country of about 3 million on Thursday.
The official death toll from the disease thus rose to 6,232. The figure does not
include 1,288 other infected people who the Armenian Ministry of Health says
have died as a result of other, chronic conditions.
Earlier this week, the government ordered Armenian universities to revert to
online classes and extended autumn holidays in schools until November 7. It is
now considering delaying school classes by another week.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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