Armenian authorities have arrested the Gyumri Mayor Vardan Ghukasyan on corruption charges following a tense day-long standoff at city hall, where police surrounded the building and clashed with Ghukasyan’s supporters.
The Anti-Corruption Committee announced on Monday that Ghukasyan and seven others were accused of soliciting and receiving bribes, including a payment of ֏4 million ($10,000) to legalise an illegally built structure in the city. According to investigators, Ghukasyan and the city’s chief architect allegedly demanded money from a local resident in exchange for re-classifying a 1,500-square-metre unauthorised construction as legal, promising to falsify official documents to show it had been demolished and rebuilt.
The committee said the case was uncovered through extensive surveillance and undercover operations, revealing a pattern of kickbacks and abuse of office within the municipality. Officials also claimed that members of the alleged network attempted to blackmail unfriendly members of the city council to maintain political control.
Tensions flared in Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, on Monday morning as law enforcement entered the city hall and blocked staff from entering or leaving. Riot police and red-bereted special forces were later deployed as crowds gathered outside to support the mayor. At least one person was detained, and several were reportedly injured in the scuffles.
By early afternoon, Ghukasyan emerged briefly from his office, telling staff: ‘We’ll go, we have no problem, we’ve done nothing wrong’. He was later taken into custody and transferred to Yerevan for questioning, his lawyer confirmed.
Ghukasyan’s legal team has insisted the charges are politically motivated, which his lawyer Aramayis Hayrapetyan saying that the Anti-Corruption Committee’s statement misrepresented the evidence and that none of the published wiretaps directly implicated the mayor.
‘There is not a single mention of a bribe connected to Vardan Ghukasyan’, Hayrapetyan told reporters. ‘This is a political show directed by the ruling party’.
He further accused pro-government lawmakers of leaking details of the investigation before it was made public.
‘When all Civil Contract MPs knew about the case and were posting with joy, it was already clear this was not a legal process but a political one’, Hayrapetyan said.
The Anti-Corruption Committee has not commented on the allegations against them, maintaining that the investigation uncovered multiple instances of bribery, extortion, and falsification of property records involving city officials.
Ghukasyan recently criticised Prime Minister NIkol Pashinyan and his government for its crackdown against the Armenian Apostolic Church, with the authorities, in turn, promising a crackdown on him.
Ghukasyan has long been a prominent and controversial figure in Armenian politics. Previously, he served as mayor of Gyumri from 1999 to 2012 and was a member of the Republican Party from 2006 to 2017. He represented the Prosperous Armenia Party in parliament and ran in the recent local elections as a nominee of the Communist Party. His victory over the ruling Civil Contract party was seen as a setback for Pashinyan's party ahead of the 2026 parliamentary elections.
After his election, Ghukasyan announced that he supports the idea of a Union-State with Russia.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
