The law-enforcement agency refused to immediately name any of those officials or clarify what they are suspected or accused of.
Sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the ACC rounded up seven persons, including the head of the Yerevan municipality’s Public Order Service, Aram Gyulzadian, and two senior officials from its department dealing with construction permits and land allocations. They allegedly took or gave bribes, the sources said.
The ACC did not deny the information. A spokesman for Mayor Tigran Avinian said, meanwhile, that his office is cooperating with the investigators. He did not comment further.
At least two other corruption inquiries were launched into senior municipal officials last year. In July, law-enforcement authorities arrested the head of Yerevan’s northern Arabkir district, Aram Azatian, on bribery charges denied by him. Azatian, who is reportedly a figure close to Avinian, is expected to go on trial soon along with 12 other suspects. Unlike him, they are not held in pretrial detention.
In November, investigators raided the administration of the city’s central Kentron district and arrested four local officials on similar charges. Avinian, who is a senior member of the ruling Civil Contract party, is not known to have been questioned in any of those inquiries.
An Armenian media outlet, Civilnet.am, implicated Avinian and his extended family in illicit enrichment late last year after a journalistic investigation jointly conducted with the international Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The 35-year-old mayor angrily denied the accusation before taking the publication to court.