The Investigative Committee said its officers have searched 51 locations as part of a criminal investigation into “large-scale” embezzlement, tax evasion and money laundering. The law-enforcement agency gave no details of the accusations. Nor did identify any of the 11 individuals which it said have been indicted in the probe.
The biggest of the targeted companies is the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) national utility which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government is planning to nationalize after pushing a relevant bill through the Armenian parliament last week. Investigators confiscated more than three dozen documents from the office of ENA’s board chairman, Narek Karapetian, who is also the tycoon’s nephew. They searched his home in Yerevan earlier in the morning.
Speaking shortly after masked officers left the ENA headquarters, Narek Karapetian described the crackdown as politically motivated and said he is not afraid of being arrested too.
“Nobody is afraid of arrest in Armenia anymore,” he told reporters. “They can arrest as many people as they want. In Armenia, being behind bars is now a greater honor.”
Narek Karapetian, who has emerged as the main spokesman of the jailed tycoon’s extended family, linked the latest raids to Friday’s rally in Yerevan held in his support of his prominent uncle and attended by thousands of people.
“We see the connection,” he said. “Had the rally not been attended by so many people, we would not have necessarily faced this kind of repression.”
During that rally, Samvel Karapetian gave the clearest indication yet of his political ambitions. In a written appeal to the protesters, he urged Armenians to rally around a “fundamentally new force” which he will presumably create in a bid to remove Pashinian from power.
Law-enforcement officers already raided on July 2 the offices of Karapetian’s Tashir Group holding company and arrested four of its executives in what they called a criminal investigation into tax evasion and money laundering.
The 59-year-old tycoon, who has lived in Russia since the 1990s and also has a dual Russian nationality, was arrested and charged with calling for a violent regime change on June 18 hours after condemning Pashinian’s attempts to depose the top clergy of the Armenian Church. He denies the charges.
Armenian opposition leaders have also described the criminal case as politically motivated and linked it to Pashinian’s campaign against the clergy. They have hailed Karapetian’s apparent plans to enter the Armenian political scene one year before the country’s next general elections.