KARVATCHAR MAYOR SENTENCED TO 5 YEARS ON EMBEZZLEMENT RAP
Anahit Danielyan

2 009/06/10 | 13:19

Nagorno Karabakh court

Zhora Grigoryan, the former mayor of Karvatchar,was sentenced to
five years imprisonment by an NKR court for the illegal sale of state
construction funds and the embezzlement of revenues in the amount of
6 million drams.

The NKR government had placed construction equipment at the disposal
of Mr. Grigoryan’s firm "Trans-kar" Ltd. Mr. Grigoryan along with
the firm’s accountant Karineh Petrosyan had been indicted by the NKR
court on February 9, 2009.

According to the indictment, Mr. Grigoryan had embezzled funds from
a water system construction project in the villages of Nor Manashid
and Nor Kharkhapout in the Nor Shamoumyan region of the country and
that he sold construction material in the care of his firm that had
been allocated for the project.

Karineh Petrosyan had been indicted for falsifying the books and
payment records of several employees to the tune of 2.112 million
drams and for embezzling the funds. She was slapped with a 700,000
dram fine and prohibited from similar employment in a state agency
or organization for the next 18 months.

The sentence handed down by Judge Marat Avanesyan also stipulates
that Zhora Grigoryan recompense "Trans-kar" in the amount of 5,715,500
drams in damages and that Karineh Petrosyan do the same in the amount
of 2,122,268 drams.

In a conversation with Hetq, Garik Mikayelyan, Mr. Grigoryan’s defense
attorney stated that he didn’t agree with the court’s sentence, arguing
that it was illegal and without basis. He claimed that Mr. Grigoryan
handed over the bulk of the funds in question to a Khachik Sahakyan,
a construction engineer.

The lawyer says that the matter should have been handles by a civil
court rather than a criminal one and that he will take the case to
an appeals court one month from now.