This is just one example of the Armenian authorities creating a spectacle through confiscated wealth.

By Ani Ghulinyan

OC Media

In early October, on the ground floor of the National Gallery of Armenia, there was a small, unnamed, uncatalogued, and uncurated temporary exhibition. There was no mention of the exhibition on the National Gallery’s website at the time, nor was there any announcement about it beforehand.

The centrepiece of the exhibition was an unnamed 1913 canvas by Gevorg Bashinjaghyan, a renowned 19th-20th century Armenian painter who had a significant influence on Armenian landscape painting. Also on display were works by Grigor Khanjyan, Sargis Muradyan, Vahan Khorenyan, and Vartan Mahokyan, as well as other artists from Armenia and abroad.

Yet there was no clear artistic link between the approximately 30 works, which ranged from a copper portrait by Anatoli Avetyan to an antique map of South America. Instead, what linked this exhibition together was that all works on display were confiscated by Armenia’s Investigative Committee from Gagik Khachatryan, a former Finance Minister and former chair of the State Revenue Committee.

The exhibition was ultimately curated by the Investigative Committee, with 40 of the confiscated paintings, including a portrait of Khachatryan himself seen in footage of the confiscated items, not making the cut.

The authorities claimed that the purpose of the exhibition was to make cultural assets accessible to the public. Yet, the public only learned about the exhibition from the Investigative Committee’s video featuring Education Minister Zhanna Andreasyan, Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan, and Investigative Committee Chair Artur Poghosyan attending the opening and viewing the exhibited works with a tour guide on 7 October.

Yet when OC Media visited the exhibition in the National Gallery on 14 October, there were no other visitors. Furthermore, the docent was unaware of the exhibition’s name or the paintings presented, stating that the ‘exhibition might be collected by the end of the day’. Other employees could not clarify who had made that decision.

The exhibit did not appear to have been advertised anywhere, and was even absent from the National Gallery’s own website, raising the question of whether it was intended to be viewed at all, or was in fact a pseudo-event — a staged occurrence created to attract media attention — rather than an act of public accountability.

The American historian Daniel Boorstin first used the term ‘pseudo-event’ in 1962 to describe events that are planned rather than spontaneous and staged mainly to be reported. Such events are often self-fulfilling, because they are designed to influence public perception of what is real.

A history of public spectacles

This is not the first time the Armenian government has created a spectacle over the confiscated wealth of a former official, a focus that has become a noticeable aspect of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s tenure.

In 2020, the government adopted a law on the confiscation of property of illegal origin, which was intended to hold former officials accountable, many of whom Pashinyan claimed had acquired their wealth illegally.

On his Facebook page, Pashinyan uses the hashtag ‘Bit by Bit’ (Hatik ar Hatik) to write almost daily about the small or large properties that were acquired illegally and have now been returned to the state. This is intended to demonstrate the government’s and Pashinyan’s commitment to their promises, and to show the public the return of what was taken from them.

When targeting political figures, the Investigative Committee has also taken to releasing footage of arrests and raids focused on luxury interiors and spectacle rather than the charges.

The leader of the Prosperous Armenia party, businessperson Gagik Tsarukyan, and his wealth have been common topics in law enforcement videos. In 2020, the NSS raided his home on suspicion of bribery and vote buying during the 2017 elections. However, the video released mainly showed his luxurious home interior, stacks of cash, taxidermy of hunted animals, and a collection of luxury cars parked in his garage.

Tsarukyan’s home was revisited by NSS in 2026 after the June parliamentary elections, when Armenian authorities raided over 70 addresses associated with Tsarukyan and arrested him in his home for financial crimes. In the video of his arrest released by the NSS, the 70-year-old Tsarukyan shows no resistance, yet officers force him to the ground and handcuff him, with handcuffs that are clearly too small for his hands. This created a spectacle, an eye-catching event in which Tsarukyan was explicitly shown to be overpowered just after Pashinyan had called him a criminal and declared that Tsarukyan ‘would live in a cage for decades to come’.

While earlier videos of such arrests during Pashinyan’s government did not attract much criticism, they have recently received more backlash. Armenia’s Human Rights Defender, Anahit Manasyan, has opened a review into the Investigative Committee’s video of Tsarukyan’s arrest, saying the footage raises questions about compliance with legal standards on the use of handcuffs and physical force.

Representatives of the Human Rights Defender’s office visited him at the Yerevan-Kentron Penitentiary to assess his health, detention conditions, and whether his rights were being protected. Manasyan stressed that law enforcement may lawfully use detention and force but must follow the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality set out by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Handcuffs and force must be justified by concrete circumstances, such as resistance or flight risk, not simply by the fact of arrest, and handcuffs must never be excessively tight.

Gagik Khachatryan’s legal scrutiny

The detention of Gagik Khachatryan, the owner of the paintings being shown in the National Gallery, similarly drew wider attention after he was brought to court on a stretcher on charges of particularly large-scale bribery and money laundering. His lawyers and family argued that Khachatryan has serious spinal health problems, while law enforcement authorities maintained that there were legal grounds for his detention because of the risk he could obstruct the investigation or abscond. His lawyers have filed an application with the ECHR challenging his arrest and detention, claiming that his condition makes detention unjustified.

Human rights advocates also criticised how the proceedings were handled. Human rights activist Zaruhi Hovhannisyan warned that the process risked moving away from restoring justice and toward violations of personal dignity, with treatment that could amount to degrading conduct. Artur Sakunts of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office, a local rights group, shared that view, saying the court should have prevented it. In his assessment, wheeling a person into the courtroom on a stretcher and holding the hearing while he lay on it was an affront to human dignity.

The legality of showcasing the paintings confiscated from Khachatryan’s house was also questioned by his legal team, who argued that the exhibit violates the property and privacy rights of his family members. The lawyers say that many of the roughly 70 paintings seized in the criminal case were never his, but instead came from a family apartment and belong to various relatives who received them as gifts. They called the seizure and public display unlawful and say investigators never asked the family about the paintings’ origin or ownership.

The Investigative Committee in turn stated that canvases seized and examined during the criminal proceedings were recognised as material evidence.

In response, Khachatryan’s lawyers have argued that putting the works on display, rather than simply preserving them, shows the paintings cannot be material evidence in the case. The lawyers have sent a written inquiry to the Investigative Committee, but have not yet received a response.

The National Gallery declined to comment on the exhibition.

Asked about the exhibition, the Investigative Committee said that ‘70 paintings discovered and seized as a result of searches conducted in the apartments of the defendants Artyom and Gagik Khachatryan, who are being investigated by the Investigative Committee, have been recognised as material evidence by a decision. They have been handed over to the National Gallery of Armenia for safekeeping, and thus the issue of their possession has been resolved during the preliminary investigation of the criminal proceedings’.

The Investigative Committee did not address questions over why they had decided to exhibit the artwork, why the exhibition was not advertised, why it had no name, or why it did not have a curator.