Armenia arrests 14 affiliates of Karapetyan for alleged election bribery
Armenian authorities arrested 14 affiliates of Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia party on Thursday, in what authorities say is the latest in a series of cases involving alleged electoral bribery. Two other party members were placed under investigation on the same charges earlier this week.
The arrests were confirmed by the Anti-Corruption Committee, which said they were carried out ‘on charges of giving and receiving electoral bribes’.
Earlier on Thursday, Gohar Meloyan of the Strong Armenia party said in a social media post that party members and supporters had been detained, including a female MP candidate.
‘Since morning, lawyers’ access has been obstructed’, Meloyan said.
She added that such actions ‘only further motivate people to fight to live in a normal, law-based country’.
Later, the Human Rights Defender's office announced that as a result of measures taken by the office, lawyers have been allowed to enter the Anti-Corruption Committee and exercise legal assistance.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
On Thursday, Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee announced that based on their investigation, members of Strong Armenia and others registered as employees of the party’s affiliated non-governmental organisation, ‘distributed electoral bribes to a number of voters in the Artashat community of Ararat province’.
According to the Committee, in an effort to conceal their activity ‘members of the group communicated with each other via internet applications’.
They also published what appears to be secret recordings of phone conversations among the people involved in the case. One of the interlocutors was heard urging the other to contact them via Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram, or personally show up and speak in person.
Earlier, one of Karapetyan’s lawyers, Vahan Hovhannisyan, announced in a press briefing that two of the 14 detainees had been charged, further noting that the grounds for the detentions were allegations of electoral bribery and violations of the ban on charitable activities during the pre-election period.
The case is reportedly connected to the activities of Karapetyan’s Our Way organisation, which was ‘established for charitable purposes, and programmes were carried out involving certain individuals who received salaries’.
‘Now, according to the investigating body, as I understand it, those salaries are being considered as electoral bribes. Perhaps the individuals were not working under formal employment contracts, but at most this could be viewed as a violation of labour relations, which is not at all within the scope of criminal law’, Hovhannisyan said, according to state-run media outlet Armenpress.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
Earlier this week, two other members of Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia party, Gohar Ghumashyan and Verzhine Stepanyan, were placed under investigation after being detained for allegedly violating a ban on handing out charities during the pre-election period ahead of the 7 June parliamentary elections.
Strong Armenia called the arrest of the two women ‘another manifestation of [Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinyan’s panic’.
Ahead of these arrests, Armenian authorities launched several similar cases in recent months against Karapetyan’s party members, which, according to polls, is the main political opponent of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract in the upcoming elections.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
Karapetyan is the president of the Strong Armenia party and its candidate for prime minister.
On Wednesday, Karapetyan announced that he began the process of renouncing his Russian and Cypriot citizenship. However, Karapetyan will still be ineligible for the post of MP or prime minister, because under Armenian legislation, candidates should be solely Armenian citizens and have lived in Armenia for the past four years.
