Official records show that Avinian’s mother, Hasmik Khlghatian, is the formal owner of the 300 square-meter house and an adjacent plot of land located in the city’s northern Nork-Marash district. Estimates of its market value cited by different media outlets vary from $500,000 to $650,000.
Avinian’s father Armen described those figures as inflated when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday. But he refused to specify how much the family paid for the property in November. He said only that he had to sell his two apartments and obtain a mortgage loan in order to buy it.
Armenian law does not require Avinian’s parents to disclose their incomes because they officially do not live with the mayor.
The legality of their family’s assets became a subject of media speculation after a journalistic investigation jointly conducted by Civilnet.am and the international Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
In a November article, Civilnet.am said that the 35-year-old mayor’s dazzling political career has been “accompanied by the growing prosperity of businesses linked to his family.” The article singled out an agribusiness firm officially owned by Avinian’s father and brother. It received government contracts, grants and loan subsidies when he served as deputy prime minister from 2018-2021. Avinian denounced the “false article” and sued the online publication.
Other senior members of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party have also faced and denied media allegations of illicit enrichment. Pashinian has claimed to have eliminated “systemic corruption” in Armenia.
It emerged in December that Yerevan’s municipal administration paid as much as 7.7 million drams ($19,500) to buy air tickets for Avinian’s working visit to the United States. Faced with an uproar, the mayor used his personal money to cover the exorbitant cost of the trip.