Monday, February 5, 2024
Pro-Opposition Doctor Convicted Over 2021 Elections
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Doctor and opposition deputy Armen Charchian gestures to supporters
after an appeals court's decision to allow his arrest, August 23, 2021
A court in Yerevan on Monday gave a suspended prison sentence to a prominent
Armenian surgeon and former opposition lawmaker convicted of pressuring his
subordinates to participate in the 2021 parliamentary elections.
Armen Charchian ran for the parliament on the ticket of the main opposition
Hayastan alliance while heading Yerevan’s Izmirlian Medical Center owned by the
Armenian Apostolic Church. He was prosecuted after a non-governmental
organization publicized a leaked audio recording of his pre-election meeting
with hospital personnel.
Charchian told them that they must vote in the snap elections or risk a
different “attitude” by the hospital management. He was charged with coercion of
voters and arrested three days after the vote won by Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s party.
Both Charchian and the opposition bloc led by former President Robert Kocharian
rejected the accusations as politically motivated. The doctor insisted that he
only urged hospital employees to cast ballots. He and two other Hayastan figures
also arrested in the wake of the elections were set free a few months later
thanks to being elected to the National Assembly.
Charchian’s lawyer, Erik Aleksanian, said he will appeal against the
three-and-a-half year sentence and insist on his client’s acquittal. Aleksanian
said that the controversial phrase uttered by Charchian at the 2021 meeting was
taken out of context and that the doctor made clear at the end of the same
speech that his subordinates refusing to go to the polls will not face any
“negative consequences.”
Charchian, 64, again became the executive director the Izmirlian hospital last
October after resigning from the parliament and thus enabling Kocharian’s
arrested son Levon to take up the vacant seat and be released from custody.
Kocharian Jr. was charged with assaulting riot police during September 2023
anti-government protests in Yerevan. He strongly denies the accusations, saying
that he himself was beaten up by security forces.
Azerbaijan Arrests Czech Citizen ‘On Armenian Border’
• Artak Khulian
Azerbaijan -- The State Security Service building in Baku.
Authorities in Azerbaijan arrested at the weekend a citizen of the Czech
Republic who they claimed illegally entered the country from Armenia.
They said the man not identified by them was first caught by Azerbaijani
soldiers deployed along the border with Armenia. They did not specify the
section of the border allegedly crossed by the man.
A website close to the Azerbaijani military speculated that the Czech man may
work for a Western intelligence service and be connected to the European Union’s
monitoring mission deployed along the Armenian side of the long and heavily
militarized frontier.
The Czech ambassador to Armenia, Petr Piruncik, categorically denied any such
connection on Monday.
“I can only confirm that a Czech citizen was detained in Azerbaijan and remains
in detention,” Piruncik told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Our embassy in Baku is
trying to get in touch with him.”
The Armenian authorities did not comment on the alleged border crossing as of
Monday evening.
The reported arrest came three days after Czech parliament speaker Marketa
Pekarova Adamova’s visit to Yerevan during which she said her EU member country
will press Baku to resume Western-mediated talks with Yerevan. The Azerbaijani
Foreign Ministry responded by accusing her of spreading “Armenian lies.”
A French citizen based in Baku was arrested in December amid Azerbaijan’s
heightened tensions with France denounced by Baku for siding with Armenia in the
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The French Foreign Ministry accused Baku of
holding the businessman, Martin Ryan, arbitrarily and demanded his immediate
release.
Armenia ‘Diversifying’ Arms Suppliers
France - French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his Armenian counterpart
Suren Papikian sign an agreement in Paris, October 23, 2023.
Armenia is moving away from its heavy dependence on Russian weapons and other
military equipment, according to Defense Minister Suren Papikian.
In a weekend interview with Armenian Public Television, Papikian said the
Armenian government decided to “diversify” the country’s arms suppliers after
Moscow failed to defend its South Caucasus ally against Azerbaijani military
attacks in September 2022.
“We have made serious progress in this direction,” he said. “This process is
irreversible, in the positive sense of the word. Current processes and contracts
will significantly change the quality of our army's weapons in the future.”
“In this process, we have also acquired new partners,” Papikian said, singling
out India and France.
Since September 2022, Armenia has reportedly signed a number of defense
contracts with India worth at least $400 million. The Armenian military is due
to receive Indian artillery systems, anti-tank rockets and anti-drone equipment.
In October 2023, Armenia also signed two arms deals with France. One of them
entitles it to buying three sophisticated radar systems from the French defense
group Thales. Papikian and his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu also signed
in Paris a “letter of intent” on the future delivery of French short-range
surface-to-air missiles.
Yerevan had earlier signed with Moscow contracts for the delivery of Russian
weapons worth $400 million, according to Armenian officials. The latter
repeatedly complained last year that the Armenian side has still not received
any of those weapons. Two senior Armenian lawmakers said last month that Russia
has shipped the first batch of that military hardware.
Armenian Tech Firms Condemn Businessman’s Arrest
Armenia - Ashot Hovanesian inaugurates his Synergy International Systems
company's branch in Vanadzor, March 11, 2022.
An association of Armenian tech companies has condemned law-enforcement
authorities for arresting the founder of one of its leading members, saying that
the criminal case against him is another serious blow to Armenia’s business
reputation.
The Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE) said over the weekend that
foreign and local investors have started viewing Armenia as a “risky country”
following a spate of “unfounded detentions.”
Ashot Hovanesian, the owner of Synergy International Systems, was arrested last
week along with two current and former employees of his software company as well
as several Ministry of Economy officials in a corruption investigation conducted
by two law-enforcement agencies. Criminal charges brought against them stem from
a procurement tender organized by the ministry and invalidated by an Armenian
court last summer.
Synergy won the tender despite setting a much higher price for its services than
another bidder. According to the Investigative Committee, the latter was
illegally disqualified by the indicted officials, notably former Deputy Economy
Minister Ani Ispirian.
The officials have been charged with abuse of power, rather than bribery. It is
not yet clear what exactly Hovanesian and his two subordinates are accused of.
Armenia - The Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises holds an annual
conference in Yerevan, February 1, 2024.
Synergy, which is registered in the United States but mainly operates from
Armenia, on Monday strongly denied the accusations and demanded Hovanesian’s,
senior company executive Lili Mkrian’s and her former colleague Ani Gevorgian’s
immediate release from custody. It argued, in particular, that Synergy, which
employs hundreds of software engineers, did not receive any government funds as
a result of the invalidated tender.
In a weekend statement, the UATE said Hovanesian’s arrest followed an alarming
pattern of “business representatives and other prominent persons” being taken
into custody on dubious charges lately.
“The vast majority of those criminal cases are closed for lack of evidence,” it
said. “Such treatment not only damages the reputation of these persons, the
companies run by them or the whole sector, built up over the years, but also
that of the Republic of Armenia, which has begun to be perceived as a risky
country for making investments and starting a business.”
“Such a short-sighted state attitude towards business representatives will
ultimately force not only foreign but also local high-tech businesses to either
stop their activities or to move to another country where all rights, including
due process, are respected,” warned the business association.
The information technology industry dominated by software developers has long
been the most dynamic sector of the Armenian economy, having grown at
double-digit annual rates since the early 2000s. The sector currently employs
more than 30,000 people, including thousands of mostly young Russians who
relocated to Armenia following Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Armenia - Parliament speaker Alen Simonian (center), his brother Karlen and
sister-in-law Ani Gevorgian.
Significantly, Gevorgian, the arrested former Synergy executive, is married to
the brother of Alen Simonian, the Armenian parliament speaker and a key
political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. This fact has fueled
speculation about political motives behind the high-profile case. Some
commentators claim that Pashinian personally sanctioned the young woman’s arrest
in a bid to boost his falling approval ratings by showing Armenians that he is
serious about combatting corruption.
There have also been media reports that Simonian is increasingly at odds with
other senior members of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. The party’s deputy
chairman, Vahagn Aleksanian, denied this on Friday.
Pashinian pledged to separate business from politics when he swept to power in
2018. He claims to have significantly improved Armenia’s business environment.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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