Confiscation of illegal property

The Armenian Prosecutor General’s Office has submitted a lawsuit to the court demanding the confiscation of a large list of property, including “79 real estate properties, 42 vehicles, 86 billion drams [$215 million]” from prominent businessman and former MP Gagik Tsarukyan.

This is not the only case demanding “confiscation of property of illegal origin.” Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan said that 93 lawsuits have been sent to court since September 2020. In general, it is about “confiscation in favor of the Republic of Armenia of about 1,000 immovable and 200 objects of movable property.” According to her, the total amount of these lawsuits exceeds 500 billion drams [$1 billion 250 million].

According to political analyst Suren Surenyants, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has once again, as in the days of the Velvet Revolution, started talking about confiscating illegal property because he was informed “about the rapid decline in his rating.” The political analyst does not rule out that new corruption scandals and revelations and “high-profile arrests” are expected in the country.

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The Prosecutor General’s Office started investigating the legality of the property owned by one of the richest people in Armenia, Gagik Tsarukyan, in October 2020. The court decision prohibited Tsarukyan and his associates from managing a certain list of immovable and movable property. As a result, the court was not presented with data substantiating the legality of the acquisition of the property that raised questions for the law enforcement agencies. Therefore, in October 2023, a lawsuit for its confiscation was submitted to the Anti-Corruption Court.

The Prosecutor General’s Office submitted a long list to the court, which includes

• 79 real estate properties,
• 42 automobiles,
• the purchase amount of 8 unidentified vehicles ($870 thousand),
• 10 real estate properties registered to Gagik Tsarukyan,
• shares in business and shares of 39 institutions,
• the amount of loans granted to 12 individuals and legal entities that could not be identified ($42 million),
• the amount of income from the use of property of illegal origin ($215 million).

Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan informed the members of the government at the regular session:

“As of today, 4 settlement agreements have been signed, according to which 6 immovable and 1 movable property have been returned to the state, the total value of which is 2 billion 100 million drams [$5,250,000]. About 79 million drams [$197,000] were also returned.”

As a result, the list of real estate returned to the state included 4 land plots in the vicinity of “Yerablur” military pantheon.

According to Vardapetyan, the Prosecutor General’s Office is also engaged in defense of state and public interests, within the framework of which about 235 lawsuits have been submitted to the court. These lawsuits demand the return of a number of parks to state ownership, territories under state protection, in particular, the buildings of “Moscow” movie theater and the Union of Artists in Yerevan, land plots of the Kumayri Museum-Reserve in Gyumri.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recalled that when he came to power in 2018, his government promised the public to return “looted state property, but failed to fulfill its commitment to the people.”

“Now that we want to state what has been done up to this point, we see that there are many lawsuits, but we can count on the fingers of one or two hands what results we have achieved,” he said.

According to Pashinyan, there are processes, but “there are no results, by and large,” although a lot of work has been done and reforms in the judicial system have been implemented:

“There are well-known corruption cases that are being tried in court, and my impression is that these cases can last 25 years. This is a big problem.”

The prime minister fears that people may assume collusion, think that the ruling majority is involved in some backroom deals, which is the reason why court cases are so long. He assures that there are no deals, it’s just that the government doesn’t want to fight corruption “in the vendetta genre.”

“It was fundamental for us that the processes be justified de jure and take place within the framework of legality.”

Pashinyan said the trials cannot last indefinitely. And he expects statistics not on lawsuits sent to court, but on convictions and acquittals.