In separate articles, the investigative publication Infocom.am and Civilnet reported earlier this year that ahead of local elections held in 2023 and 2022 Civil Contract received lavish campaign donations on behalf of scores of mostly low-income individuals who claimed to be unaware of those contributions.
The party headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed to have raised 506.5 million drams ($1.25 million) in the run-up to last September’s municipal elections in Yerevan. Infocom revealed in late January that the bulk of that sum was generated by donations ranging from 1 million to 2.5 million drams, the maximum amount of such contributions allowed by Armenian law. Their nominal contributors included presumably non-rich people, linked to senior government officials and businesspeople, as well as ordinary residents of Yerevan who could hardly afford such payments.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General claimed to have looked into the report and found no evidence of financial irregularities committed by the ruling party. It said it will therefore not open a criminal case.
Ani Chatinian, a lawyer with the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (HCA), told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday that the Vanadzor-based group has challenged that decision in court. Chatinian said the HCA has also demanded that the prosecutors launch criminal proceedings in connection with the Civilnet article published in early March. It clearly exposed “elements of crimes against the constitutional order,” she said.
According to the article, in local elections held in other parts of Armenia in 2022, Pashinian’s party received 170 million drams ($420,000) from 140 persons, the vast majority of them its own election candidates. Civilnet randomly interviewed 31 such individuals and found that 15 of them categorically deny making any campaign donations.
“Others avoided answering or said they do not remember, and some said they are too busy to answer the question,” said the media outlet affiliated with the international Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Critics suggested that Civil Contract arranged these shady payments to circumvent the cap on political donations. Pashinian flatly denied this at a news conference held on March 12. He claimed that the payments made on behalf of third persons unaware of them constitute human or organizational “errors,” rather than a violation of Armenian law.
The party’s deputy chairman, Vahagn Aleksanian, similarly insisted on Tuesday that the dubious payments were the result of “confusion” and “a number of technical shortcomings.”
Pashinian pledged to separate business from politics when he swept to power during the 2018 “velvet revolution.” He said afterwards that his party will rely on modest donations from large numbers of supporters to finance its election campaigns. Almost 70 percent of the money officially raised by it for the Yerevan mayoral race came from 2.5 million-dram donations made by 140 persons.