The Armenian Interior Ministry said on Thursday that Mkrtich Mkrtchian was at the wheel of a car that was stopped by police outside Yerevan the previous night. It said the car also carried another man who “fled, throwing away his belongings — a gun and a powder-like mass — on the road.”
“The driver of the car [Mkrtich Mkrtchian] was arrested on the spot and taken to the Vagharshapat department of the community police,” the ministry spokesman, Narek Sargsian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “No banned items were found during his personal search.”
“Measures are being taken to track down the person who fled,” said Sargsian.
The Investigative Committee said, meanwhile, that it has launched a criminal inquiry into illegal possession and trafficking of weapons, ammunition and narcotics. The law-enforcement agency did not indict anyone as of Thursday afternoon.
The incident happened one week after Narek Mkrtchian was appointed as ambassador to the U.S. He served as minister of labor and social affairs until then. Mkrtchian, who is a senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, claimed to have “learned about the incident from the media.”
“In Armenia, whether it’s my brother or someone else’s brother, everyone is equal before the law,” the envoy told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “There will be an investigation, the guilty will be identified and certainly held accountable to the full extent of the law.”
Mkrtchian insisted that he will not intervene in the probe to try to prevent his brother from going to prison. The Yerevan newspaper Hraparak alleged such intervention by another senior ruling party figure, Defense Minister Suren Papikian. The latter did not immediately comment on the claim.
Interior Minister Arpine Sargsian dismissed later in the day suggestions that the police are trying to clear the ambassador’s brother of any wrongdoing and shift the blame to his fugitive companion.
“Had the Interior Ministry aimed to cover up a crime, I can assure you that the arrest would not have happened,” Sargsian told reporters.
“The investigation will answer the question of whether Narek Mkrtchian’s brother passed the bag [with the gun and drugs] on to his friend or it belonged to the friend,” she said. “According to the facts existing at this point, nothing was confiscated from the brother.”
