Lawyer: Gagik Tsarukyan detained on charges of aiding and abetting fraud

ArmInfo. The leader of the "Prosperous Armenia" party, businessman Gagik Tsarukyan, whose house had been searched since early morning, has been detained, and a motion for his arrest will be filed with the court. This was announced on July 6 by one of his lawyers, Yerem Sargsyan, while speaking to journalists in front of the businessman's house.

According to him, Tsarukyan is currently being taken to the Investigative Committee, from where he will be transferred to court, where the preventive measure against him will be considered.

"The charges are very ridiculous and absurd: aiding and abetting fraud and aiding and abetting money laundering. We will not present many details, but where Tsarukyan or companies linked to him in any way should have been recognized as victims, they were charged. We are talking about the Armenian-Iranian Joint Chamber of Commerce. Gagik Tsarukyan was trying to facilitate the development of trade relations between Armenia and Iran," the lawyer said.

Sargsyan said that some citizens of Iran committed certain abuses during this period, and in this regard, there are reports of crime filed both here and in Iran. According to the lawyer, the Iranian side sent the crime-related materials to Armenia, and the Armenian law enforcement agencies, for some reason, decided to use these materials as a basis and turn Tsarukyan into an accused person, whereas he should have been recognized as a victim.

Tsarukyan's defense expressed bewilderment that the rights of a citizen of Armenia are being violated here. He expressed conviction that what is happening has a political subtext. According to Sargsyan, the fact that the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the National Security Service (NSS) of Armenia acted simultaneously on different cases indicates that the steps were taken after a signal from a single point.

Sargsyan stated that the entire law enforcement system of Armenia, after conducting searches at more than 70 addresses, sealed them. According to him, this means that the work of all these organizations, companies, and factories is paralyzed; consequently, more than 1,000 citizens will be left without work, and damage is also being inflicted on the state. "This means that state levers are being applied against Tsarukyan. They also made a decision to take Tsarukyan's animals and move them to small cages in the Yerevan Zoo. All this shows that they want to cause pain," Sargsyan noted.

As a reminder, businessman Gagik Tsarukyan became a target of the current authorities of Armenia after announcing his participation in the country's parliamentary elections. During the election campaign, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan publicly stated his intention to nationalize the "Araratcement" factory belonging to Tsarukyan's family, after which the Prosecutor General's Office appealed to the court demanding to invalidate the privatization of the enterprise. Simultaneously, law enforcement agencies initiated an investigation against Tsarukyan himself on charges of large-scale tax evasion. In addition, the Prosecutor's Office is seeking the confiscation of the property of the former governor of the Kotayk Province, Karapet Guloyan, and his wife, Roza Tsarukyan—the daughter of the leader of the opposition "Prosperous Armenia" party—claiming the alleged illegal origin of the assets.