Tuesday, August 2, 2022 Armenian, Russian Leaders Talk Amid Heightened Tensions In Karabakh Russian peacekeepers guard an area in the town of Lachin, December 1, 2020. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Tuesday after Azerbaijan reportedly demanded the closure of the sole corridor connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, discussed the situation around the Lachin corridor with his top security officials as well as leaders of local political forces at an emergency meeting held in Stepanakert. “Through the [Russian] peacekeeping contingent stationed in Artsakh, the Azerbaijani side has demanded that traffic [between Armenia and Karabakh] be organized along a new route in the near future,” his office said in a statement on the meeting. The Karabakh leaders discussed “measures that need to be taken in the current situation, including ensuring safe traffic with the help of the Russian peacekeeping forces,” it added without elaborating. The Azerbaijani side did not immediately comment on the claim. There were also no public statements by Armenian officials. The Kremlin said Putin and Pashinian discussed “some practical aspects of implementing the trilateral agreements” reached by the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan during and after the 2020 war in Karabakh. It did not go into details. Pashinian’s office released an identical statement on the call. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan also held a phone call on Tuesday. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, they discussed “the security situation in the region.” Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later in the day that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu phoned his Azerbaijani counterpart Zakir Hasanov. In a short statement, the ministry said they spoke about regional security and “other topics of mutual interest.” Nagorno-Karabakh - President Arayik Harutiunian holds an emergency meeting in Stepanakert, August 2, 2022. The five-kilometer-wide Lachin corridor became Karabakh’s sole overland link to Armenia following the 2020 war. Armenian forces pulled out of the rest of the wider Lachin district under the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the six-week hostilities. The truce accord calls for the construction by 2024 of a new Armenia-Karabakh highway that will bypass the town of Lachin and two Armenian-populated villages located within the current corridor protected by Russian peacekeeping troops. Azerbaijani and Turkish construction firms have been rapidly building a 32-kilomer-long highway that will link up to new road sections in Armenia and Karabakh. Armenia’s Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures said last Friday that work on the Armenian section will start in August. The authorities in Stepanakert reported the Azerbaijani demand to switch to the new corridor the day after accusing Azerbaijani forces of attacking Karabakh Armenian army positions in the disputed territory’s northwest. They said that one Karabakh soldier was wounded as a result. A view of the village of Vank in Nagorno-Karabakh's west. Baku denied violating the ceasefire regime. However, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that there were “three ceasefire violations by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.” “The Russian peacekeeper command, in cooperation with representatives of the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides, has resolved the situation,” added the ministry. “No changes in the line of contact were allowed.” The Karabakh army also did not report fresh fighting on Tuesday. Still, its commander, Kamo Vartanian, said in the afternoon that “tension persists at some sections of the line of contact.” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried appeared to have discussed the heightened tensions with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in separate phone calls on Monday. “She called for de-escalation and encouraged continued dialogue,” the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs tweeted afterwards. The European Union’s special envoy to the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, likewise urged the conflicting sides to “deescalate and avoid derailing an historic opportunity to turn the page on decades of strife.” European Body ‘Asked For Advice’ On Armenian Asset Seizures • Naira Nalbandian Armenia - Venice Commission President Claire Bazy Malaurie addresses a conference on judicial reforms in Yerevan, June 8, 2022. Armenia’s Constitutional Court claims to have asked legal experts from the Council of Europe to give an “advisory opinion” on a controversial Armenian law allowing the confiscation of assets deemed to have been acquired illegally. The law enacted two years ago allows prosecutors to seek asset forfeiture in case of having “sufficient grounds to suspect” that the market value of an individual’s properties exceeds their “legal income” by at least 50 million drams ($120,000). Armenian courts can allow the nationalization of such assets even if their owners are not found guilty of corruption or other criminal offenses. The latter would have to prove the legality of their holdings. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly portrayed this as a major anti-corruption measure that will help his administration recover “wealth stolen from the people.” Opposition figures claim, however, that Pashinian is simply planning a far-reaching “redistribution of assets” to cement his hold on power. Last November, lawmakers representing Armenia’s main opposition forces appealed to the Constitutional Court to declare the law in question unconstitutional. They said that it contradicts articles of the Armenian constitution guaranteeing the presumption of innocence and property rights. The court has still not ruled on the appeal. It announced on July 8 that it has asked the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe for legal advice on the matter. The Strasbourg-based organization’s press office told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday that the Venice Commission has not yet received the application from Armenia’s highest court. Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with judges of the Constitutional Court, December 27, 2021. Ara Ghazarian, an Armenian expert on international law, suggested that the commission is unlikely to recommend a blanket scrapping of the law sought by the opposition. “Through its case law, the European Court [of Human Rights] has long given the green light to the adoption and enforcement of such laws, saying that they do not contradict the European Convention [on Human Rights] in principle,” argued Ghazarian. “The Venice Commission will draw conclusions along those lines.” At the same time, he said, the commission could call for limiting retroactive application of the law and making it harder for the authorities to seize assets. Armenian prosecutors have filed 12 asset forfeiture cases in courts to date. They involve about 200 properties and vehicles as well as 21 billion drams ($51 million) in cash belonging to former government or law-enforcement officials and/or their family members. So far no court rulings have been handed down on any of those cases. There have been suggestions that judges dealing with them have serious misgivings about the legality of asset forfeiture. The prosecutors have also secured court injunctions freezing a comparable amount of assets held by 25 other individuals or their relatives. The latter too will have to fight for their expensive properties, businesses and cash holdings in court. Government Official Denies Crackdown On Former Yerevan Mayor • Narine Ghalechian • Nane Sahakian Armenia - Mayor Hayk Marutian walks out of a session of Yerevan's municipal council shortly before it voted to oust him, December 22, 2021. The head of an Armenian government inspectorate has denied suggestions that its allegations of serious financial irregularities committed by Yerevan’s municipal administration are designed to quash former Mayor Hayk Marutian’s political ambitions. The State Oversight Service (SOS) began auditing the municipality’s financial operations last December just days after the city council controlled by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party ousted Marutian. The SOS claimed last week to have found evidence of various “violations” worth a combined 8.5 billion drams ($20 million). It asked law-enforcement authorities to investigate the findings of the audit, raising the possibility of criminal charges against Marutian. Speaking in the RFE/RL studio in Yerevan on Monday, the head of the SOS, Romanos Petrosian, insisted that the audit and the resulting allegations are not politically motivated. He argued that his agency is also inspecting many other state bodies. “It’s not that the SOS can arbitrarily ignore obedient [officials] and audit disobedient ones,” said Petrosian. The official, who is a senior member of the ruling Civil Contract party, said he believes that at least some of the alleged irregularities resulted from “corruption schemes.” “But Hayk Marutian did not govern the city of Yerevan on his own, and [all municipal officials] from junior specialists to the mayor exercised their powers,” he went on. “So this must not be politicized.” Responding on the SOS’s allegations late last week, Marutian said through a spokesman that he welcomes “efforts to increase the efficiency of resource management” in central and local government bodies. He did not comment further. The ex-mayor commented scathingly on July 1 after several pro-government websites alleged that the Yerevan municipality embezzled or misused otherwise as much as $40 million on his watch. He suggested that the allegations are aimed at discouraging him from participating in the next municipal elections. Marutian, 45, is a former TV comedian who actively participated in the “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power in May 2018. Pashinian chose the popular entertainer to lead his bloc’s list of candidates in the last Yerevan elections held in September 2018 Relations between the two men deteriorated after the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Marutian increasingly distanced himself from the prime minister’s political team and pointedly declined to support it during snap parliamentary elections held in June 2021. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.