BAKU (Azatutyun.am) — One day before the start of his trial in Baku, Armenian billionaire and former Nagorno-Karabakh premier Ruben Vardanyan on Thursday, January 16, rejected criminal charges brought against him as politically motivated and accused Azerbaijani investigators of attributing false testimony to him.
“I officially declare: I have given no testimony since the day of my arrest, except during the first interrogation, where I only stated my name and surname,” Vardanyan said in a statement which his family in Armenia said was conveyed to it during his weekly phone call. “All protocols bearing my signature are falsifications. These documents do not exist in reality. My lawyer and interpreter were coerced into signing these documents.”
“I once again reiterate and state my complete innocence and the innocence of my Armenian compatriots also being held as political prisoners and demand an immediate end to this politically motivated case against us,” he said.
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor in September 2023 as he fled the region along with tens of thousands of its ordinary residents displaced by an Azerbaijani offensive. He was initially charged with “financing terrorism,” illegally entering Karabakh and supplying its armed forces with military equipment.
Vardanyan said in his statement that he is now facing as many as 42 charges, some of which carry [the penalty of] life imprisonment.
“I have not been granted the opportunity to fully review the official indictment,” he said. “My lawyer and I were merely allowed to skim through 422 volumes of the case files, all written solely in the Azerbaijani language, which I do not understand, within a very short timeframe – from December 9, 2024, to January 8, 2025. I only received the list of charges in Russian on January 8, 2025.”