The plant located on the mountainous Marts river was co-owned by Samvel Darbinian, a former mayor of the nearby city of Vanadzor, and his brother. Darbinian has faced a string of corruption charges since the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power.
Last November, a Vanadzor court found him guilty of one of those charges but dropped the case, citing a statute of limitations. The decision came six months after the sale of the Marts power plant.
Its official buyer is a 20-year-old nephew of Khachatur Kokobelian, a businessman leading a small pro-government party. The new owner named Pashinian’s brother Armen to run the plant immediately after the deal.
Armen Pashinian used to live in Russia. He returned to Armenia after the 2018 regime change. The fact-checking website Fip.am revealed recently that he is also the chief executive of three other businesses belonging to the Kokobelian family.
Earlier this week, Darbinian dismissed suggestions that he sold the hydroelectric facility to avoid imprisonment. Both the ex-mayor, who ran Vanadzor from 1999-2016, and his brother Seyran refused to give a clear reason for the sale.
“I sold it because I wanted to sell,” Seyran Darbinian said vaguely.
In a written response to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service sent on Friday, the Armenian state registry of legal entities revealed that the new owner bought the plant for as little as 50,000 drams.
The plant had an authorized capital of 250 million drams ($610,000) as of April 2021. According to Armenia’s national power distribution network, it produced more than $200,000 worth of electricity annually in 2019 and 2020.
Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly claimed to have eliminated “systemic corruption” in Armenia. Law-enforcement authorities have launched dozens of high-profile corruption investigations during his rule, mostly targeting former top government officials and individuals linked to them.
Critics say that Pashinian uses corruption inquiries to crack down on his political opponents. They also claim that some members of his entourage are busy enriching themselves or their cronies and question the integrity of procurements administered by the current government.