Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said the Ararat Cement plant, owned by tycoon and opposition figure Gagik Tsarukyan, will soon come under state control. The move, announced on Thursday, marks the latest blow against Tsarukyan, who was arrested on 6 July on money laundering charges.

‘Ararat Cement will very soon become state-owned, and a manager will be appointed according to the established procedure’, Pashinyan said, without specifying a timetable for the nationalisation process.

It was not the first time Pashinyan had discussed nationalising the plant — prior to the parliamentary elections on 7 June, he described the factory as the ‘backbone’ of Tsarukyan’s business empire and alleged irregularities had occurred in its privatisation in the early 2000s.

On the same day Tsarukyan was detained, the plant was raided by the authorities and sealed. The plant employs some 1,000 workers, many of whom came out to protest its closure, saying the work stoppage was hurting their pocketbooks.

In turn, Pashinyan said they were violating an ‘order’ from authorities and threatened to fire them, RFE/RL reported.

On Thursday, Deputy Economy Minister Edgar Zakarian showed up at the plant, where negotiations were ongoing between police and the factory workers. Following a meeting with plant management, Zakarian announced that ‘the factory is now resuming work’.

‘Hopefully minor technical obstacles will be resolved in a few hours, and it will be fully operational tomorrow’, he added.

Other pillars of Tsarukyan’s business empire have also come under threat recently — in June, the operating license of his Shangri La casino was revoked.

At the time, Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan said financial discrepancies in the gaming machine counters had been discovered after an inspection earlier this year.

Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia party during the pre-election campaign. Photo: social media.

Arrests continue

In an apparently unrelated incident on Thursday, Aregnaz Manukyan, an MP candidate for Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia party list, was arrested on suspicion of divulging state secrets. The case appears to be connected to a preexisting treason investigation against opposition politician Andranik Tevanyan, also on Tsarukyan’s party list.

Prosperous Armenia fell just shy of reaching the threshold for joining parliament in the elections held in June.

It is unclear if Manukyan’s arrest is connected to the case against Tsarukyan, whose lawyer Yerem Sargsyan said was charged with aiding and abetting fraud and money laundering. Sargsyan additionally claimed that he was detained as part of a case where he ‘should have been recognised as a victim’.

On Wednesday, the Investigative Committee said another individual had been arrested in the case against Tsarukyan, but did not add any further details.

Sargsyan explained that the case involves the creation of a joint Armenian–Iranian chamber aimed at developing economic cooperation between the neighbouring countries. He said that the proposed chamber had received necessary permits from the state, and that ‘significant investments were made’. However, he said that some Iranian nationals ‘committed abuses’, leading Tsarukyan to sue them.

‘Instead of recognising the organisation with his participation as the victim, they decided to make Gagik Tsarukyan the defendant’, Sargsyan said, adding that he believed the arrest to be politically motivated.