According to Tsarukian’s lawyers, the officials from the Investigative Committee “inspected” the vast plot of land surrounding his hilltop villa in the village of Arinj as part of a criminal case opened against a former head of the community nearly six years ago.
“A number of land plots in that community are subject to inspection, including the land plot belonging to Mr. Tsarukian,” one of the lawyers, Emin Khachatrian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He said his client was not required to attend the “inspection.”
The 69-year-old tycoon was questioned as a witness in the case years ago. The Investigative Committee declined to say why it is showing an interest in his estate now. A law-enforcement source said the investigators are also looking into land occupied by a nearby shopping mall belonging to Tsarukian’s family.
Tsarukian is already standing trial on vote buying charges that were levelled against him in 2020 after he and his Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation. He has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.
Neither Tsarukian nor BHK representatives commented on the raid that followed the ruling Civil Contract party’s pledges to prevent the Armenian opposition from winning parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7.
Senior Civil Contract figures exposed in recent days their fears regarding the emergence of three major election contenders led by Tsarukian, another wealthy businessman, Samvel Karapetian, and former President Robert Kocharian. They seemed particularly irked by the ongoing creation of Tsarukian’s new bloc that will be made of up of not only the BHK but also at least two other opposition parties.
“We must not allow Kocharian, the Russian oligarch, and the local oligarch with pro-Belarusian leanings to decide the fate of our country,” Ruben Rubinian, a deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament, said on Wednesday.
These statements fueled more opposition claims that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian may resort to electoral fraud or foul play in order to hold on to power. Hasmik Hakobian another pro-government lawmaker, denied the claims on Thursday. She insisted that Pashinian’s political team will only strive to convince most Armenians not to vote for any of the three opposition forces.
“Obviously, nobody is going to just ban them [from running in the elections] unless they are constitutionally not eligible,” Hakobian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Tsarukian’s BHK had the second largest group in the country’s former parliament. But it failed to win any parliament seats in the last general elections held in June 2021. Tsarukian kept a low profile in the following years.
Tsarukian announced in October that he and his political allies will participate in the June polls. Less than two months later, prosecutors filed a new criminal charge against him. They said he sold his bottling plant in Bulgaria for 23 million euros ($27 million) in breach of an Armenian court’s decision to freeze his assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Office of the Prosecutor-General moved to confiscate them in late 2023, invoking a controversial law that allows the state to seize money, property and companies deemed to have been acquired illegally. The court issued the injunction at the time.
