RFE/RL Armenian Report – 11/29/2021

                                        Monday, 


Armenia Also Imposes Omicron Travel Ban

        • Robert Zargarian

Syringes with needles are seen in front of a displayed stock graph and words 
"Omicron SARS-CoV-2" in this illustration taken, November 27, 2021.


Armenia will temporarily bar entry of residents of South Africa and seven other 
regional states in a bid to protect its population against the new coronavirus 
variant Omicron, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said on Monday.

The heavily mutated variant first detected in South Africa earlier this month is 
believed to be highly transmissible and potentially resistant to coronavirus 
vaccines. It now seems to be spreading around the world, leading many countries 
to impose travel restrictions.

Avanesian said the Armenian government will take similar measures affecting 
citizens of South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Mozambique, 
Zimbabwe and Madagascar.

“The entry of people from these countries to the Republic of Armenia will be 
temporarily restricted,” she told a news conference.

The minister echoed concerns about Omicron’s possible ability to evade existing 
vaccines protecting people against COVID-19. Still, she made clear that the 
government will continue to encourage Armenians to get inoculated.

According to the Armenian Ministry of Health, only about 436,400 people in the 
country of about 3 million have been fully vaccinated to date.

Avanesian announced that after weeks of deliberations the government has decided 
to introduce on January 1 a mandatory health pass for entry to cultural and 
leisure venues. Only those people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or 
have had a recent negative test will be allowed to visit bars, restaurants and 
other public venues, she said.

The daily number of officially confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Armenia 
began declining about two weeks ago after several months of steady increase that 
overwhelmed the national healthcare system. The Ministry of Health recorded 189 
cases and 21 deaths on Sunday, the lowest figures reported in weeks.



Court Extends Arrest Of Former Armenian Defense Minister

        • Artak Khulian

Armenia -- Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan at a news conference in 
Yerevan, April 9, 2019.


A court in Yerevan has extended the pretrial detention of Davit Tonoyan, a 
former defense minister facing corruption charges strongly denied by him.
Tonoyan, two generals and an arms dealer were arrested by the National Security 
Service (NSS) two months ago in a criminal investigation into supplies of 
allegedly outdated rockets to Armenia’s armed forces. The NSS charged them with 
fraud and embezzlement that cost the state almost 2.3 billion drams ($4.7 
million). All four suspects deny any wrongdoing.

Tonoyan’s lawyers again dismissed the accusations as baseless on Monday in 
response to a weekend court ruling allowing NSS investigators to hold Tonoyan in 
pretrial detention for two more months. In a statement, they claimed that the 
investigators lack “professional knowledge” of weaponry and ammunition and are 
simply keen to discredit the former defense minister.

“We again want to bring the political leadership’s attention to the 
non-objective investigation conducted with regard to Davit Tonoyan,” they said.

The NSS said in September that a private intermediary delivered the rockets to 
Armenia in 2011 and that the Defense Ministry refused to buy them after 
discovering that they are unusable.

Seyran Ohanian, Armenia’s defense minister from 2008 to 2016, confirmed 
afterwards that they were not accepted by the military during his tenure. 
Ohanian, who is now a senior opposition lawmaker, said the rebuff forced the 
supplier to store them at a Defense Ministry arms depot.

Citing the secrecy of the ongoing probe, the NSS has declined to publicly 
specify the date of the supply contract subsequently signed by the Defense 
Ministry or give other details.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian appointed Tonoyan as defense minister just days 
after coming to power in May 2018. Tonoyan was sacked in November 2020 less than 
two weeks after a Russian-brokered agreement stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani 
war over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Some senior pro-Pashinian parliamentarians blamed him for Armenia’s defeat in 
the six-week war. The prime minister faced angry opposition demonstrations at 
the time.



New Power Plant Inaugurated In Armenia

        • Emil Danielyan

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other officials attend the 
inauguration of a newly built power plant in Yrevan, .


A German-Italian consortium inaugurated on Monday a thermal power plant built by 
it in Yerevan as part of a $270 million project approved by the Armenian 
government.

The 254-megawatt facility is expected to enable Armenia to use less natural gas 
for electricity generation. It will also diversify foreign ownership in the 
country’s energy sector.

The ArmPower consortium consists of a subsidiary of Germany’s Siemens group and 
two Italian companies. One of them, Renco, is the main engineering, procurement 
and construction contractor in the project.

Renco had supposedly launched the project in March 2017 with a ground-breaking 
ceremony attended by then President Serzh Sarkisian.

Armenia’s current government froze, however, Renco’s contract with the Sarkisian 
administration shortly after taking office in May 2018. It said the deal is not 
beneficial for the Armenian side and must be renegotiated.

The two sides signed a revised deal in November 2018. Armenian officials said at 
the time that the Renco-led consortium agreed to cut its electricity tariff by 5 
percent. That, they said, will allow Armenia to save $160 million in energy 
expenses over the next 25 years.


Armenia -- The site of a new power plant built by a German-Italian consortium in 
Yerevan, July 12, 2019.

Work on the new power plant began in earnest in July 2019 four months after 
ArmPower secured more than $200 million in loans and loan guarantees from 
several international lenders, notably the Washington-based International 
Finance Corporation (IFC).

The plant was inaugurated in the presence of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and 
Renco’s chief executive, Giovanni Rubini. An Armenian government statement on 
the ceremony said its electricity will be cheaper than power supplies coming 
from other gas-powered plants that currently meet roughly one-third of Armenia’s 
energy needs.

One of them was constructed in Yerevan in 2010 with a $247 million loan provided 
by Japan. The state-owned facility has a capacity of 242 megawatts.

Renco has done business in Armenia since the early 2000s. It was not involved in 
the local energy sector until its latest project, investing instead in luxury 
housing, hotels and office buildings. But the Italian company has built, 
installed or operated power generation and distribution facilities in other 
parts of the world.



Court Upholds Acquittal Of Kocharian

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian speaks at a news conference, 
Yerevan, October 4, 2021.


Armenia’s Court of Appeals has rejected prosecutors’ demands to overturn a lower 
court’s decision to throw out controversial coup charges that were brought 
against former President Robert Kocharian.

Kocharian and three other former officials were prosecuted in connection with 
the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Anna Danibekian, a district court 
judge presiding over their trial, acquitted them in early April ten days after 
the Constitutional Court declared the charges unconstitutional.

The trial prosecutors appealed against the acquittal. They demanded that the 
Court of Appeals allow investigators to charge the defendants with abuse of 
power and order Danibekian to resume the coup trial.

The Court of Appeals rejected the prosecutors’ appeal in a ruling announced late 
on Friday. One of Kocharian’s lawyers, Hovannes Khudoyan, welcomed the decision.

A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that 
the law-enforcement agency will look into the ruling before deciding whether to 
appeal to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of criminal justice.

Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and two retired army 
generals have said all along that the coup charges leveled against them are 
politically motivated. Lawyers representing them maintain that Danibekian’s 
decision to clear them of the alleged “overthrow of the constitutional order” 
stemmed from Armenian law.

The judge also ruled on April 6 that Kocharian and Gevorgian will continue to 
stand trial on separate bribery charges which they also strongly deny. Court 
hearings on that case resumed in July.

Kocharian, who is highly critical of Armenia’s current leadership, was first 
arrested in July 2018 shortly after the “velvet revolution” that brought Nikol 
Pashinian to power. He was set free on bail in June 2020.

The 67-year-old ex-president set up an opposition alliance in May this year. It 
finished second in parliamentary elections held in June.


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