CEC allowed Narek Karapetyan to be charged. Aram Vardevanyan

The RA Central Electoral Commission satisfied the petition of the prosecutor’s office, and Narek Karapetyan, a member of the “Strong Armenia” party, will be deprived of parliamentary immunity.

On July 21, it became known that the RA Prosecutor’s Office submitted a petition to the CEC to deprive Karapetyan of his immunity, based on the accusations attributed to party member Alik Aleksanyan (incentivizing people to participate in pre-election gatherings and money laundering). The CEC had already sent back the petition of the RA Prosecutor’s Office once, but on July 13, the Prosecutor’s Office again submitted the same petition to the commission for consideration.

“The CEC, having examined the issue of indicting Narek Karapetyan, has satisfied the circumstance of giving consent. This is not a waiver of immunity, it is a consent to prosecution. In order to deprive of freedom, the CEC must give its consent again.

We presented our counterarguments”, said lawyer, member of “Strong Armenia” party Aram Vardevanyan in a conversation with journalists after the session.

Before that, he said that it is clear from the petition submitted by the CEC on July 13 that the prosecutor’s office seems to have confused the status of the CEC with an administrative court or an appellate administrative court in a certain sense.

“Having submitted the same petition to the CEC, the prosecutor’s office expected that the CEC should simply change its position. That’s how it happened, because the CEC did not just return the petition without substantive examination at that very moment, but began to conduct an investigation,” Vardevanyan emphasized.

Narek Karapetyan was not present at the closed session of the CEC.

—