Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan has always been a blackmailer and achieved everything only through blackmail, said Armenian ex-envoy to the Vatican Mikael Minasyan during his video message.
"He was even elected prime minister by blackmail, he said in the [Republic] square that if he was not elected prime minister, Armenia would not have a prime minister. Nikol Pashinyan and Anna Hakobyan [PM's spouse] continue to make money through blackmail in Armenia, they just use the National Security Service, the police, the prosecutor’s office, and the State Revenue Committee, along with Haykakan Zhamanak [newspaper], because all the big businessmen pay these two. These are the people about whom Nikol Pashinyan and Anna Hakobyan are still silent," he noted.
"When Nikol Pashinyan made me an offer in Rome, this, of course, was blackmail."
According to Minasyan, "one very precious person" said that Pashinyan called him and he was told: “Call him, and if he stops his conversations, I will not publish what I have and I will stop all court cases. Let him mind his own businesses, and I will continue to rob people, kill them, and so on.”
"I rejected this friend. When he asked me what I want and why I reject him, I told him a story."
"And the story was as follows: when my daughter Mariam was 2-3 years old, we celebrated her birthday in a cafe. And an article was published in Haykakan Zhamanak that my daughter had a chain with diamonds and a gold pacifier with diamonds," the ex-envoy noted adding that the next day, a close colleague of Nikol Pashinyan from Haykakan Zhamanak – today he is an MP Hayk Gevorgyan – said that if Minasyan does not want such things to be written about his child, then something needs to be done.
Minasyan said he agreed to finance their newspaper for the sake of his family.
"I have been blackmailed only once in my entire life, which I consider to be a mistake because I succumbed to the psychological terror of my family," he added. "Over the years, I have financed the Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper under this scheme."