Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian gained access to that data after the lawmaker, Hovik Aghazarian, turned down his resignation “request” texted on November 17. Pashinian shared it with senior members of his Civil Contract party before they decided to expel Aghazarian from the party on December 3. They accused him of leaking “confidential information of state and partisan importance” to media and violating “public morality norms.”
Pashinian denied breaking the law when he spoke in the National Assembly on December 4. He implied that another security agency, presumably the National Security Service (NSS), passed Aghazarian’s personal data on to him after finding there unspecified “information containing threats to state security.”
Aghazarian’s lawyer, Hakob Charoyan, insisted on Tuesday that the breach of the personal data constituted a crime defined by the Armenian Criminal Code. Charoyan said he has petitioned prosecutors to formally investigate and find out how the Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), which repeatedly interrogated his client and took away his phone late last month, allowed it to happen.
“The fact is that it was spread by the prime minister,” Charoyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But who was the starting point of that?”
The Office of the Prosecutor-General on Monday gave a further indication that law-enforcement authorities may move to indict Aghazarian. It said it asked the ACC to look into “reports” that he leaked state secrets. Charoyan criticized the “absurd” decision.
Pashinian also stated on December 4 that “political, moral, and other levers” will be used to strip Aghazarian of his parliament seat. The only legal way of doing that is to lift the lawmaker’s immunity from prosecution and accuse and convict him of a crime. Critics say Pashinian’s statement amounts to an illegal order issued to investigators and courts.
Aghazarian claimed on December 5 that “powerful” individuals are threatening to publicize intimate details of his private life if he keeps refusing to quit the parliament. Some of those purported details appeared on pro-Pashinian social media accounts in the following days.
Aghazarian did not name the alleged blackmailers. He again made clear that he will not give up his parliament seat.