Court refuses to release David Tonoyan

The Armenian Court of Appeal (CoA) has left David Tonoyan, a former Armenian Defence Minister, who is accused of embezzlement in supply of weapons, behind bars.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on September 30, the National Security Service (NSS) of Armenia reported that David Tonoyan, a former head of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), was detained and arrested on suspicion of embezzling about USD 4.7 million when supplying weapons. David Galstyan, the head of the supplying company, was detained under the same case. Tonoyan refuses to plead guilty; his defence decided to appeal against his arrest at the CoA.

On October 15, the Armenian CoA, chaired by Judge Tigran Saakyan, considered the defence's appeal against the first-instance court's ruling to arrest David Tonoyan, and left him in custody, his advocate, Sergey Ovannisyan, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, adding that so far, the defence has not received the judicial act, but after receiving and studying it, the advocates plan to appeal against the CoA's decision at the cassation instance.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on at 05:12 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.