WHAT THE GENERAL PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE FAILED TO MENTION
Feature Stories court
2010/10/04
Doesn’t Armenian Law Enforcement Trust Interpol?
There have been many responses to an article entitled Convicted Bank
Swindler Sends “Confession” to President Sargsyan that appeared in
the September 13, 2010 edition of Hetq. Law enforcement agencies,
including the Chief Prosecutor’s Office and other media outlets have
seen fit to comment.
On September 17 one Armenian paper ran an article with the headline
“The collaborator is playing games”. The article reports that while
it is noted, in the answer received from the Interpol office in Great
Britain, that Romanian citizen Oliver Raducu Marian is included in
the criminal registry, this doesn’t mean that he ever was convicted
since there are no court sentences in the criminal case files.
In addition to the article, the paper published a letter
sent by Interpol to Major-General S. Melkonyan, head of the
Counter-Intelligence Division at the RoA National Security Service
(NSS). The paper failed to publish the entire document. Surprisingly,
they left out the part where it states that “Oliver Marian was
included in the criminal registry and that he has been convicted of
fraud twice.”
Thus, Hetq is compelled to publish the following. We are also
publishing that excerpt of Judge Gagik Avetisyan’s verdict where he
states that the court found there were grounds for leniency given that
Marian had no prior convictions; he had a clean record up till then.
Simultaneously, we are publishing information received from the
Romanian Office of Interpol regarding Oliver Marian. Accordingly,
“Oliver Marian is known to head an organized crime syndicate and
is know top have employed fake ATM’s cards in Great Britain, the
Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Morocco and France. He has been able
to steal large sums of money and thus purchase property, expensive
automobiles and open extensive bank accounts.”
The fact that past court sentences handed down to Oliver Marian were
not included in the criminal case here in Armenia, does not signify
that the information relayed by the Interpol in Great Britain isn’t
accurate. Let’s assume that law enforcement in Armenia, for some absurd
reason, doesn’t trust Interpol. At the very least, they could have
requested information about Marian’s past convictions and sentences,
rather than make believe they had no prior knowledge about them.
The author of the “The collaborator is playing games” article also
wrote that Oliver Marian’s case was examined in a speeded-up trial and
thus the judge was under no obligation to examine all the evidence. The
reporter argues that this is the reason why Marian’s prior convictions
for fraud were never revealed.
Of course, this is an absurd conclusion to make. Any sitting judge
is required to take a person’s behavioral characteristics and his
or her past criminal record into account before passing sentence,
regardless of the status of the trial. Not taking all this into
account would be akin to a judge not knowing the full name of the
defendant being tried in court.
In addition, do not forget that the investigating prosecutor in the
case also participated in the trial proceedings. Even if Judge Gagik
Avetisyan had “no clue” as to Oliver Marian’s prior criminal record,
the prosecuting attorney was professionally obliged to inform him
about it.
As to why Judge Gagik Avetisyan preferred to overlook such an
important circumstance in the case is a matter for much speculation;
there are scores of possible explanations. In any event, given the
materials presented in the case, Judge Avetikyan had no right to
allow falsifications in his verdict.
We humbly believe that the RoA Council of Justice should at least take
a look at some of the information reported in the press and adopt an
appropriate decision regarding the judge.
From: A. Papazian