Armenian Opposition Figure Gagik Tsarukyan Arrested

Armenpress later reported that the authorities have also confiscated lions Tsarukyan had kept in his residence, transferring them to the Yerevan Zoo. Iveta Tonoyan, a spokesperson for Prosperous Armenia, said the animals had been “kept in the best possible conditions” at the tycoon’s home.

Tsarukyan has been under investigation since June 9, a mere two days after Armenians took to the polls to vote in the parliamentary elections.

At the time, Prosperous Armenia was still awaiting the outcome of vote recounts which would have determined whether it entered parliament. The Central Election Commission (CEC) later announced that the opposition party failed to pass the 4-percent electoral threshold to secure seats in the legislature.

He had apparently attempted to leave the country through Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport before being placed under investigation, but was barred from doing so.

Tsarukyan is one of the wealthiest men in Armenian politics. Having begun his business career in food processing during the 1990s, over three decades he has amassed a stake in a wide variety of industries throughout Armenia, including alcohol and food production, casinos, hotels, mineral extraction, pharmaceuticals, and most recently, bitcoin mining.

The eccentric tycoon has previously been charged under a number of crimes in the past. In 2020, the authorities accused him of electoral bribery allegedly committed in the 2017 elections. He was also under investigation for operating the Shangri La casino without a license. Armenia revoked the Shangri La’s license in late June.

Additionally, Tsarukyan was sentenced for raping two women in 1979, for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison. According to RFE/RL, it is not clear whether Tsarukyan served the sentence imposed by the Soviet-era court.

In 2001, during Robert Kocharyan’s presidency, the Armenian Court of Cassation overturned the verdict, exonerating Tsarukyan.

Cement Plant to Be Nationalized

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said the Ararat Cement plant, owned by Tsarukyan, will soon come under state control. The move, announced on July 10, marks the latest blow against Tsarukyan.

“Ararat Cement will very soon become state-owned, and a manager will be appointed according to the established procedure,” Pashinyan said, without specifying a timetable for the nationalization process.

It was not the first time Pashinyan had discussed nationalizing the plant — prior to the parliamentary elections on June 7, he described the factory as the “backbone” of Tsarukyan’s business empire and alleged irregularities had occurred in its privatization in the early 2000s.

On the same day Tsarukyan was detained, the plant was raided by the authorities and sealed. The plant employs some 1,000 workers, many of whom came out to protest its closure, saying the work stoppage was hurting their pocketbooks.

In turn, Pashinyan said they were violating an “order” from authorities and threatened to fire them, RFE/RL reported.

On that day, Deputy Economy Minister Edgar Zakarian showed up at the plant, where negotiations were ongoing between police and the factory workers. Following a meeting with plant management, Zakarian announced that “the factory is now resuming work.”

“Hopefully minor technical obstacles will be resolved in a few hours, and it will be fully operational tomorrow,” he added.

Other pillars of Tsarukyan’s business empire have also come under threat recently — in June, the operating license of his Shangri La casino was revoked.

At the time, Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan said financial discrepancies in the gaming machine counters had been discovered after an inspection earlier this year.

Arrests Continue

In an apparently unrelated incident on July 10, Aregnaz Manukyan, an MP candidate for Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia party list, was arrested on suspicion of divulging state secrets. The case appears to be connected to a preexisting treason investigation against opposition politician Andranik Tevanyan, also on Tsarukyan’s party list.

It is unclear if Manukyan’s arrest is connected to the case against Tsarukyan, whose lawyer Yerem Sargsyan said was charged with aiding and abetting fraud and money laundering. Sargsyan additionally claimed that he was detained as part of a case where he ‘should have been recognized as a victim.”

(This report is a combination of two stories that originally appeared on www.oc-media.org, on July 7 and 10.)