An Armenian law-enforcement agency has refused to bring vote-buying charges against a controversial pro-government mayor who has provided material aid to local residents ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections.
Tavros Sapeyan, who runs the town of Talin about 70 kilometers northwest of Yerevan, allocated late last month a total of 11.5 million drams ($31,000) in public funds to 14 low-income families. The money was supposedly spent on payment of their utility bills and provision of food and medication to them.
A coalition of Armenian civic groups linked the handouts to the June 7 elections and accused Sapeyan violating a legal ban on election-related benevolence as well as a separate law on local government. The mayor, who is on the list of the ruling Civil Contract party’s election candidates, denied that.
The Independent Observer coalition went on to submit a relevant “crime report” to the Office of the Prosecutor-General. The Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), which was instructed by prosecutors to look into the complaint, cleared Sapeyan of any wrongdoing.
“Tavros Sapeyan made the decisions to provide social assistance not as a party member or election candidate but as a community head,” the ACC said in a statement.
Sapeyan is a staunch ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian who has been personally involved in the latter’s controversial campaign to depose Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He was among a group of aggressive men who tried to burst into the church’s main cathedral in Echmiadzin on December 18 during a prayer service led by Garegin.
Sapeyan avoided prosecution despite being caught on camera swearing at a priest during a scuffle with worshippers attending the service. On January 6, the mayor led a group of local officials and government loyalists who barred priests from entering Talin’s main church on Tuesday, enabling a defrocked cleric loyal to Pashinian to hold a Christmas mass there.
No ruling party member or supporter has been prosecuted on vote-buying charges so far. Nor has the ACC taken action against a charity run by Pashinian’s wife, Anna Hakobian, and accused by the Independent Observer of illegally engaging in benevolent activities. The ACC has prosecuted instead dozens of members and supporters of billionaire Samvel Karapetian’s Strong Armenia bloc widely seen as the main opposition contender in the upcoming polls.
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