Detained Russian–Armenian billionaire Karapetyan to found new ‘political force’
Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian–Armenian billionaire detained on charges of making calls for the overthrow of the government, has announced plans to create a ‘fundamentally new political force’ through which he could cooperate with ‘like-minded people’.
Karapetyan made the announcement through a Facebook post from detention on Monday morning.
In the post, he thanked the ‘tens of thousands’ of his supporters who protested and called for his release from detention.
He went on to briefly outline his plans to create a ‘fundamentally new political force’, while apparently shunning the work of Armenia’s opposition parties.
‘I have great respect for the political forces and figures who have fought a real struggle against the policy of [Prime Minister] Nikol Pashinyan’s anti-national government. But we have our vision to build a good future for Armenia. And we will go our own way, with our new team, not excluding domestic cooperation with like-minded people’.
‘Even in different circles of today's administration, there are real professionals who don't share the values of the small group [Civil Contract/ Pashinyan’s government], but still don't see the way out of the situation’, he said, adding that the ‘formation of our political team has begun’.
‘We will do it in our own way’, he concluded his post in an allusion to the remark he had made before his arrest.
Karapetyan was charged in mid-June after making statements in support of the Armenian Church amidst its ongoing conflict with the government.
‘If the politicians fail, then we will participate in our own way in all of this’, Karapetyan had said in an interview with News.am before his arrest.
On 8 July, the authorities raided the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the country’s sole electricity distributor run by Karapetyan’s Tashir Group. While no arrests were made during the raid, Narek Karapetyan, the detained tycoon’s nephew and chair of ENA, said that investigators seized 37 documents from the company.
The raid followed the adoption of legislative amendments on 4 July that would virtually allow the state to nationalise the company.
Pashinyan had previously claimed the move was not related to Karapetyan’s pro-church statements, and was instead rooted in public discontent with the company’s services and frequent power outages in Armenia, which Pashinyan alleged were intentionally used ‘to generate internal public discontent’.
However, critics of the recent legislative amendments warn that the nationalisation of ENA could have consequences on the country’s investment climate and foreign economic relations.
The ENA raid is part of a broader conflict between the ruling Civil Contract party and the Armenian Church, which in late June resulted in the arrest of at least 15 people on charges of seeking to violently overthrow the government with a coup d’état.
The authorities allege that the plot was spearheaded by the now-detained Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, an opposition figure who leads the anti-government Holy Struggle movement.
Yousef Bardouka
