Yerevan municipal government officials arrested on bribery charges

On Wednesday, three current officials and one former member of the Yerevan municipal government were reportedly arrested as part of an ongoing anti-corruption investigation.

Citing sources, RFE/RL said that the four individuals included former city official Robert Darbinyan, who previously headed the city’s urban planning department, current urban planning officials Mikayel Ghimoyan and Aram Ayvazyan, and  Public Order Protection Service head Aram Gyulzadyan.

‘The investigative actions are carried out within the framework of proceedings in the Anti-Corruption Committee, officials from Yerevan City Hall have been arrested’, Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee told Armenpress without adding any further details.

Hayk Kostanyan, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, also confirmed that officials from city hall had been arrested, but he did not confirm the names of the individuals in question.

Details of the alleged crimes remain unclear, but RFE/RL reported that they are related to bribery, adding that a total of seven people had been arrested as part of the probe.

The arrests follow a series of corruption scandals that the Yerevan municipal government has been implicated in over the past year, reaching all the way up to Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan.

In November, a joint investigation by CivilNet and the OCCRP suggested that Avinyan’s family-run company had benefited from a project overseen by Avinyan, who was serving as Armenia’s Deputy Prime Minister at the time.

According to the article, ‘during Avinyan’s tenure as Deputy Prime Minister from 2018 to 2021, nine beneficiaries of an agricultural program under Avinyan’s purview subcontracted work out to Irrigate LLC, a company Avinyan founded and which was owned by his brother at the time, according to government records’.

The article noted that Avinyan, his father, who was named as company director, as well as his brother, did not respond to requests for comment.

After the investigation was publicised, Avinyan filed a lawsuit against CivilNet and said that the media in Armenia had become ‘one big garbage dump’.

In July 2024, five officials from the Yerevan municipal government were arrested as part of an anti-corruption probe. The charges also were related to bribe-taking.

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OC MediaArshaluys Barseghyan