Businessman and opposition leader Gagik Tsarukian again denied fraud charges levelled against him as he went on trial on Thursday more than three months after his post-election arrest promised by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Also standing trial are eight other individuals, including Sedrak Arustamian, the former chairman of Tsarukian’s Multi Group holding company.
The charges stem from a financial dispute with two Iranian business partners who set up two years ago a joint venture with Tsarukian’s Multi Group that never operated as planned. Armenia’s Investigative Committee has backed their allegations that Tsarukian misappropriated $22 million worth of fuel, transport equipment and other goods supplied by them from 2022-2024.
Tsarukian’s lawyers insist he himself was defrauded by them. They publicized purported video evidence of their claims ahead of the trial.
“I want to understand why all the documents provided by the [Iranian] ‘victims’ are considered evidence whereas those submitted by us were not recognized as evidence and not included in the indictment,” one of the defense lawyers, Yerem Sargsian, said at the start of court hearings on the high-profile case.
“I am 100 percent innocent,” Tsarukian insisted, for his part. He again denounced the “fabricated” case.
The tycoon leading the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) was arrested on July 6 following Pashinian’s repeated pledges to jail and “dispossess” him and the top leaders of other major opposition groups that challenged the ruling Civil Contract party in disputed elections held on June 7. The BHK joined those groups in rejecting the official election results as fraudulent.
Tsarukian’s party fell just short of clearing a 4 percent vote threshold for entering the Armenian parliament after the Central Election Commission cancelled vote results in three precincts and controversially refused to rerun the elections there. Election observers from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) have criticized the CEC’s decision that greatly benefited Pashinian’s party.
Tsarukian was demonstratively taken into custody just as investigators sealed off the offices of dozens of Multi Group companies employing thousands of people. The Armenian authorities seized the largest of them, a brandy distillery and a cement plant, in the following weeks.
Later in July, Tsarukian was also charged with evading taxes that were due to be paid by the Yerevan-based Ararat Brandy-Wine-Vodka Factory. He denies these accusations as well.
The leaders of two other opposition groups that won seats in the parliament are also prosecuted by the authorities on separate charges rejected by them as politically motivated. One of them, former President Robert Kocharian, was arrested in August, while the other, billionaire Samvel Karapetian, was moved to house arrest last December after spending more than six months in prison.