A court in Yerevan on Friday extended by two months the pre-trial arrest of Robert Kocharian regarded by the former Armenian president and his opposition Hayastan alliance as politically motivated.
Kocharian was arrested on August 25 the day after his younger son Levon bitterly argued with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on the Armenian parliament floor. His elder son Sedrak and the chief executives of four companies partly or fully owned by the latter were also taken into custody.
Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) claims that Kocharian had abused his powers to let Sedrak acquire state-owned land for those businesses at cutdown prices during his 1998-2008 rule. It also accuses him of money laundering and bribery. Sedrak Kocharian is accused of assisting in the alleged crimes strongly denied by him and his father.
The court backed ACC claims that they could obstruct the continuing investigation if set free now. Kocharian’s lawyers continued to say that the investigators have failed to substantiate their accusations.
“If they have even a slight regard for the law, they should dismiss this case regardless of any political pressure,” one of them, Aram Orbelian, told journalists.
Orbelian insisted that the 72-year-old ex-president is not responsible for the land privatizations because they were formally approved by Armenia’s government which he technically did not head. As part of the same criminal case, the ACC is posthumously prosecuting Andranik Markarian, who served as prime minister from 2000 until his death in 2007.
The defense lawyers also said the land in question was privatized in the 2000s at the market-based prices of that time, which were well below the current ones.
Hayastan was one of the three main opposition groups that challenged Pashinian in the June 7 parliamentary elections and accused him of rigging their results. Before and after the elections, Pashinian repeatedly pledged to jail and “dispossess” their leaders. He accused Kocharian of corruption, pointing to the ex-president’s and his sons’ business interests.
Kocharian had already been incarcerated for three times since the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. He faced accusations stemming from a 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. He and three other former officials are still standing trial on those charges denied by them.