Author: Emma Nadirian

                                        Tuesday, 


More Armenian POWs Freed By Azerbaijan

        • Naira Bulghadarian

ARMENIA -- People stand at a Russian military plane with some of Armenian 
captives upon its arrival at a military airport outside Yerevan, December 14, 
2020


Azerbaijan set free and repatriated five more Armenian prisoners of war late on 
Tuesday.

The soldiers were flown from Baku to Yerevan by a Russian military transport 
plane. They were immediately taken to a military hospital in the Armenian 
capital for a medical checkup.

Dozens of other Armenian soldiers remain in Azerbaijani captivity. Most of them 
were taken prisoner in Nagorno-Karabakh shortly after last year’s 
Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

Many of these POWs were given lengthy prison sentences earlier this year in 
trials condemned by the Armenian government. Armenia regularly demands their 
unconditional release, saying that they are held in breach of a Russian-brokered 
agreement that stopped the six-week war.

Azerbaijan says the agreement does not cover them because they were captured 
after the ceasefire took effect in November.

Baku freed this summer 30 Armenian POWs in exchange for maps of Armenian 
minefields in districts around Karabakh that were retaken by Azerbaijani forces 
during and after the war. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev claimed early this 
month that those maps are not accurate and said Yerevan should provide more 
detailed information.

Shortly afterwards Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian signaled his readiness to give 
Baku more such maps to secure the release of more Armenian prisoners.

It was not immediately clear if the release of the five Armenian soldiers was 
the result of such an exchange. They returned home ahead of a fresh round of 
Russian-mediated talks in Moscow on the reopening of transport links between 
Armenia and Azerbaijan envisaged by the Karabakh truce accord.



Jailed Mayor’s Backers ‘Rounded Up By Police’ After Election Win

        • Gayane Saribekian

Armenia -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (L), Goris Mayor Arush 
Arushanian (C) and other officials walk through the center of the town, 
September 12, 2020.


Dozens of supporters of the jailed opposition-affiliated mayor of a major 
community in Armenia’s Syunik province were reportedly taken to a local police 
station for questioning one day after he was reelected in a weekend vote.

An opposition bloc led by Arush Arushanian, the mayor of the town of Goris and 
surrounding villages, defeated the ruling Civil Contract party by a wide margin 
three months after his controversial arrest. Arushanian remains in detention.

The Armenian police deployed additional personnel in Goris and raided the bloc’s 
local headquarters during Sunday’s vote, searching it for several hours. It 
emerged afterwards that they suspect Arushanian’s father and campaign manager 
Gagik of trying to bribe local voters.

Representatives of the opposition bloc bearing the arrested mayor’s name 
denounced the police raid as a government attempt to influence the outcome of 
the closely watched election. Arushanian’s bloc won 62 percent of the vote, 
according to preliminary election results.

Armen Melkonian, a lawyer representing the bloc, said on Tuesday that 33 of its 
members and supporters were taken in for questioning in Goris on Monday. “This 
is real terror,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Melkonian, who was present at the interrogations, dismissed police explanations 
as “ridiculous.” Gagik Arushanian also categorically denied trying to buy votes.

“They want to discredit us but won’t succeed,” said the mayor’s father. “This is 
fresh blackmail. This is a loser’s mindset. They can’t come to terms with their 
defeat. There is not a single person who can come out and say that they were 
offered [a vote bribe.]”


Armenia - Arush Arushanian's father Gagik talks to journalists in Goris, October 
17, 2021.

Vladimir Abunts, Civil Contract’s defeated mayoral candidate in Goris, defended 
the police actions and denied that they are aimed at bullying local opposition 
forces.

Arushanian Sr. was not charged with any crime or even questioned by the police 
as of Tuesday evening. Nor did the police issue any statements on the crackdown.

Daniel Ioannisian, who coordinated election observers deployed in Goris and 
other parts of the country, said they heard claims about vote irregularities 
committed by both the ruling party and Arushanian’s bloc. He criticized 
law-enforcement authorities for not investigating allegations that a government 
loyalists handed out vote bribes in Tegh, a rural community not far from Goris. 
Civil Contract won the local election held there.

“We see in the government’s behavior a failure to properly investigate what 
happened in Tegh, but we see no problem with what they are doing in Goris 
because we have credible information that vote bribes were distributed in 
Goris,” said Ioannisian.

The Yerevan-based activist did not specify whether members of his monitoring 
team witnessed any instances of vote buying.

Arush Arushanian, in office since 2017, was one of the four heads of urban 
communities in Syunik who were arrested shortly after the June 20 parliamentary 
elections on various charges rejected by them as politically motivated. They all 
demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation and joined the main 
opposition Hayastan alliance formed by former President Robert Kocharian in the 
run-up to the snap polls.

Arushanian was remanded in pre-trial custody on July 16 after being charged with 
trying to buy votes. The Special Investigative Service (SIS) claims that he 
ordered the head of a village close to Goris to provide financial aid to local 
residents who will promise to vote for Hayastan.

The 30-year-old community chief strongly denies that, saying that the poverty 
benefits approved by the local council were allocated on a regular basis and had 
nothing to do with the general elections.



Pashinian Backs Closer Economic ‘Integration’ With Russia


Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other senior officials attend a 
Russian-Armenian business forum in Yerevan, September 20, 2021.


Armenia is committed to further deepening commercial ties with Russia, its main 
ally and trading partner, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Tuesday.

“The Russian Federation not only plays a key role in maintaining peace and 
stability in our region but also occupies a central place in our country’s 
economy,” Pashinian said in an address to a Russian-Armenian interregional 
conference held in Yerevan.

“We need to improve our economic relations in a way that will foster the 
development of competitive industries in our countries,” he told government 
officials and businesspeople from the two states attending the forum. “In this 
context, we regard as important further mutual integration of our economies, 
which must be based on a free movement of goods, services, labor and capital. 
The [Russian-led] Eurasian Economic Union serves this strategic goal.”

Bilateral commercial ties should be diversified to cover knowledge-based sectors 
of the Russian and Armenian economies, added Pashinian.

According to Armenian government data, Russian-Armenian trade rose by almost 12 
percent in the first eight months of this year, to $1.54 billion, after 
shrinking by 4 percent in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Russia thus 
remained Armenia’s number one trading partner, accounting for about 31 percent 
of its overall foreign trade, compared with the European Union’s 20.2 percent 
share in the total.

Russia’s Deputy Minister for Economic Development Dmitry Volvach hailed the 
renewed growth in bilateral trade when he spoke with journalists during the 
Yerevan forum.

Russian companies plan to invest $1 billion in the Armenian economy “in the near 
future,” the Armenpress news agency quoted Volvach as saying. He said the 
investments will be channeled into energy, transport and other infrastructures.

Speaking at a recent Russian-Armenian business forum in Yerevan, 
Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian said his Moscow-based Tashir 
Group will invest up to $600 million in the Armenian energy sector in the coming 
years.

Tashir owns the South Caucasus country’s electricity distribution network, 
largest thermal-power plant and second most important hydroelectric complex.



Armenian Court Asked To Approve First Asset Seizure

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - The main entrance to the Office of the Prosecutor-General.


Armenian prosecutors have asked a court to allow the confiscation of expensive 
properties belonging to the family of a former security official who was fired 
last year after allegedly disclosing an influential government minister’s 
criminal record.

Serob Harutiunian, who used to run a counterintelligence division in the 
National Security Service (NSS), his wife and son risk becoming the first 
persons to lose their assets, worth a combined 485 million drams ($1 million), 
as a result of a controversial law enacted by the Armenian government last year.

The law 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 ($110,000). 
Courts can allow the nationalization of such assets even if their owners are not 
found guilty of corruption or other criminal offenses.

A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor-General, Gor Abrahamian, told 
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday that the Harutiunian family’s assets, 
including an expensive apartment in downtown Yerevan, caught the law-enforcement 
agency’s attention when it was conducting a separate criminal investigation in 
early 2020.

Harutiunian was accused at the time of leaking to an Armenian newspaper the fact 
that then Minister for Territorial Administration Suren Papikian had spent a 
year in prison for stabbing his commander during his compulsory military 
service. Papikian, who is now the country’s deputy prime minister, publicly 
urged law-enforcement authorities to find out who publicized “the secret 
information relating to my private life.”

The NSS colonel was eventually cleared of the charges but still lost his job. He 
and his family members will now have to prove the legality of their holdings in 
the court. The prosecutors filed a relevant lawsuit on Monday.

The law in question allows an out-of-court settlement of such cases which would 
require suspects to hand over 75 percent of their assets to the state.

According to Abrahamian, the prosecutors hope to cut such deals with about a 
dozen other individuals also suspected of illegal enrichment. They include 
Vladimir Gasparian, Armenia’s national police chief from 2011-2018, Arman 
Sahakian, the former head of a government agency on privatization, and a niece 
of former President Serzh Sarkisian.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly portrayed the asset forfeiture 
mechanism as a major anti-corruption measure that will help his administration 
recover “wealth stolen from the people.” Opposition figures have condemned it as 
unconstitutional and accused Pashinian of planning a far-reaching 
“redistribution of assets” to cement his hold on power.


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