Armenian investigators are seeking the arrest of Gagik Khachatrian, a former powerful chief of Armenia’s tax-collecting body, as part of a criminal case involving new allegations of bribe-taking and money-laundering on a particularly large scale, the Investigative Committee said on Tuesday.
The committee said urgent investigative and procedural actions, including searches, were carried out at the apartments of Khachatrian and his son, as well as at the offices and branches of about two dozen companies linked to them.
Khachatrian, who served as State Revenue Committee chairman in 2008-2014 and finance minister in 2014-2016 under former President Serzh Sarkisian, is facing new criminal prosecution, according to the Prosecutor-General’s Office. The charges concern alleged bribe-taking, embezzlement, illegal disposal of property, and concealment of the criminal origin of money.
The charges include an allegation that Khachatrian accepted a particularly large bribe from the director of a local property development company in the form of real estate.
Investigators also allege that he embezzled an equivalent of $480,000, among other funds, during budget-financed construction of a training center in the resort town of Dilijan.
Another allegation concerns a scheme involving the illegal disposal of property belonging to Yerevan’s Brusov State University.
Investigators further allege that Khachatrian laundered $415,000, concealing its criminal origin.
Neither Khachatrian nor his legal representatives immediately commented on the new criminal case.
Later on Tuesday, Khachatrian’s legal team released footage of his detention, showing National Security Service officers carrying the 70-year-old man, who appeared to be groaning in pain, from his bed on a stretcher.
Earlier, the Prosecutor-General’s Office cited an expert assessment stating that Khachatrian “does not have any health problems that could prevent him from participating in any procedural action in the criminal proceedings.”
In a separate case concerning allegedly illicitly acquired assets, the Anti-Corruption Court is considering claims seeking the confiscation from Khachatrian and persons linked to him, including his sons, of 193 pieces of real estate, including 46 apartments in the center of Yerevan and 89 properties in Armenia’s Kotayk Province.
