Category: 2019

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenia Constitutional Court on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a legal provision that has been used by law-enforcement authorities for arresting and prosecuting former President Robert Kocharian.

Kocharian’s lawyers had challenged the legality of two articles of the Armenian Code of Procedural Justice invoked by investigators accusing him of taking bribes and overthrowing the constitutional order shortly before the end of his decade-long rule in 2008.

The court ruled that one of those articles is unconstitutional because it does not take account of current and former senior Armenian officials’ immunity from prosecution guaranteed by the Armenian constitution. But it dismissed the defense lawyers’ objections to the other clause that spells out legal grounds for arresting criminal suspects.

The ruling was signed by six of the nine Constitutional Court judges, including the court chairman, Hrayr Tovmasyan. Two other judges wrote dissenting opinions that were not immediately made public.

The ninth judge, Vahe Grigoryan, was excluded from the consideration of Kocharian’s appeal because of having previously represented relatives of the eight protesters killed in the March 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Kocharian and three retired Armenian generals stand accused of illegally using the armed forces against opposition supporters who demanded the rerun of a disputed presidential election. They all deny the accusation.

Speaking to reporters, one of Kocharian’s lawyers, Aram Vartevanyan, seemed satisfied with the Constitutional Court verdict read out by Tovmasyan. Vartevanyan said the ruling means that Kocharian’s arrest constituted a “violation of his constitutional rights” and that the ex-president should therefore be released from jail.

Asked whether he believes his client must also be cleared of the coup charges, Vartevanyan said: “We will be able to answer this question only after familiarizing ourselves with the full text of the court’s decision.”

Armenian prosecutors and the Special Investigative Service (SIS), which indicted Kocharian in July 2018, did not immediately react to the court ruling.

In July, Pashinian accused Tovmasyan of cutting political deals with Kocharian’s successor, Serzh Sarkisian, to “privatize” Armenia’s highest court. Tovmasyan responded by warning the government against attempting to force him and his colleagues to resign.

Kocharian was set free five days after the start of his trial in May. A district court judge presiding over it, Davit Grigoryan, further angered government supporters with his decision to suspend the trial and ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the legality of the charges brought against the ex-president.

Kocharian was arrested again after Armenia’s Court of Appeals overturned Grigoryan’s decisions in late June. Law-enforcement authorities charged Grigoryan with forgery in the following weeks. The judge was suspended as a result.

The case was then assigned to another judge, Anna Danibekyan. She is due to resume Kocharian’s trial on September 12.

FRESNO—Award-winning pianist Sofya Melikyan will perform a recital as part of the “Young Armenian Talent” series of the Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Concert Series at Fresno State. The performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 27 in the Concert Hall on the Fresno State campus. Melikyan will be performing works by Chopin, Rachmaninov, Komitas, and Geghuni Chitchyan.

The concert is co-sponsored by the Armenian Studies Program of Fresno State and the Thomas A. Kooyumjian Family Foundation.

Melikyan has recently performed in recitals at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the American Liszt Society in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Guangzhou Opera House in China, Bulgaria Concert Hall in Sofia, Santiago de Compostela Auditorium in Spain, “Chopin+” Festival in Luxembourg, as well as debuts with the North Shore Symphony Orchestra in Chicago and Vancouver Symphony in the U.S.

Born in Yerevan, Armenia, Sofya Melikyan began her musical formation at the Tchaikovsky Special School of Yerevan with Anahit Shajbazyan. She completed her further training at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid with Joaquin Soriano (where she graduated with Honors), Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris with Ramzi Yassa (where she, again, graduated with Honors), and the Manhattan School of Music in New York with Solomon Mikowsky.

Hailed for her “magnificent singing line and exquisite artistic sensibility,” this Armenian-born pianist is recognized as an artist with a unique voice combining “high-wire virtuosity” with “deep musical intuition and the ability to connect with the audience” (Mundoclasico).

General tickets for the Concert are available for $25 per person, $18 for seniors,, and $5 for students. Ticket reservations for the concert can be made online, or by calling 559.278.2337.

Free parking will be available in Lot P1 (Shaw and Maple entrance to campus). For more information please contact the Armenian Studies Program at 559.278.2669 or visit the website.

Priotix Software Development Company is one of the many ventures that are advancing Armenia’s burgeoning IT sector and advancing the country’s goals of becoming a regional hub for advanced technologies and innovation.

The company’s chief executive office Lusine Vardanyan said that Priotix has been developing and maintaining both enterprise software solutions as well as web and native mobile applications with global clients for several years. She also discussed the growth in IT and how technology is strengthening Armenia’s future. Below is her interview with Asbarez.

Asbarez: Lusine, how would you describe the IT market’s development in Armenia?

Lusine Vardanyan: Armenia has been one of the great innovation hubs for centuries, one that many have unfortunately never heard of. That is why many global tech companies are surprised by the quality results they achieve through opening development offices in Armenia.

As a strategic economic cluster for the country, the government tries to boost the IT sector by providing tax breaks and investments in education, which remains behind in its desired benchmarks.

Nationwide, there are about 800 IT companies. In the past ten years, the industry has been growing by an average of 23%, and a number of experts in and around the space have agreed that this growth will continue. You may also have seen an article, titled “Yerevan – Silicon Mountains,” in which Yerevan is ranked fourth among the top 10 startup capitals.

Asbarez: How else is that growth being encouraged and fostered?

L.V.: Promoting young talent is a priority in the Armenian IT sector. By 2018, around 19,550 people were employed by the industry, with the government’s target being to employ around 40,000 IT professionals by 2025.

The industry is also comparatively feminine. Almost 30% of Armenian IT professionals are women, though I still face predominantly male executives at industry events as one of the few female CEOs in the Armenian tech industry.

Asbarez: What is the main focus of Priotix?

L.V.: Priotix, which was previously known as Sourcio, is a full-service custom software partner with an incredibly experienced senior development team based in Armenia. The team has been developing and maintaining both enterprise software solutions as well as web and native mobile applications with our global clients for several years.

Asbarez: How do you differentiate yourself from competitors in the domestic software development market?

L.V.: Our team prides itself on engineering maturity, quality and scalability of our delivered solutions, and our ability to meet time-to-market requirements. This is what makes the company different, and it’s how we’ve been able to secure a client return rate of more than 95% and a satisfaction rate close to 100%.

We are one of the very few software partners in Armenia securing high quality scalable cloud architecture and deployment, CI/CD, automated workflows, and testing environments, as well as automated monitoring and alerting.

Another differentiator of Priotix is that we usually don’t commit to short-term and one-time projects. Our strategic business model is partnering with global clients who are looking for long-term dedicated teams that fully substitute their IT departments.

We commit to those long-term software development projects which bring with them exciting end products and business propositions, as we usually negotiate equity partnerships for both the company and the dedicated team on top of signing a service contract. Partnership is our cornerstone business model both with the team and clients.

Asbarez: What are your company’s future plans, both in the near future and in the long term?

L.V.: One of our mid-term goals is developing a new service of big data engineering, trying to leverage the expertise of our certified engineers to assist both current and new clients with their ever-growing big data engineering needs.

Our company’s growth is very dynamic, so, in the long term, we plan to expand by bringing more like-minded experienced software developers, data engineers, DevOps, QAs, and other professionals to our great team.

Asbarez: Can you tell us about some of the flagship products developed by Priotix?

L.V.: One such flagship product that we’ve partnered with is a Minnesota-based startup with an Armenian founder focusing on competitive video games and the esports industry.

We have developed an unparalleled web platform called WIN.gg that is a content hub covering such popular games as Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Overwatch, Fortnite, and more.

It’s a venue through which gamers, enthusiasts, bettors, and any other industry stakeholders may benefit from individually customized news content, statistics, tournament standings, and more. In the near future they will also be able to access dynamic rankings and AI-powered match projections.

WIN also has its own CS:GO competitive league targeting up-and-coming teams looking to launch their careers forward. Winners League 3rd season starts from October 2019. And we’ve recently launched mobile apps for iOS and Android that can be downloaded from App Store and Google’s marketplace.

For now, WIN’s main markets are North America and Europ, with strategic goals of expanding to China and other Asian markets in the future.

Asbarez: What drew you to work on this particular project?

L.V.: You likely know that video gaming is booming in the United States and around the world, with 22.3 percent annual growth rate in the industry. 1 out of 4 millennials are playing at least one competitive game on a daily basis. The annual growth rates for both revenue and audience have been higher than for traditional sports for several years now.

With all of this being considered, we think WIN.gg has incredible potential.

Asbarez: Can you tell us more about WIN.gg?

L.V.: Pre-seed and Seed investors of the startup company share our belief in the industry’s future and in the product’s potential, as the founder and CEO Serge Vardanyan has already raised several million dollars from local angel investors.

Serge has always had a passion for competitive gaming, as well as a dream of creating his own successful company. He was born in Armenia and moved to the U.S. in 2015 upon accepting a job offer from a leading international gaming technology and service provider to manage operations in the Americas.

He decided to leave that company and pursue his dream. He was fortunate enough to find like-minded peers with whom he could start building an ambitious product that would eventually better any potential competitor in the market. With that ambitious goal in mind, he turned to Armenia and contracted Priotix in early 2018 for web and mobile development services, and WIN.gg has been our flagship partner since.

Vachagan Baghdagyulyan, a professional master trainer Gold’s Gym in Armenia, won first place in his weight category at the AWPC World Powerlifting Championship in Orlando, Fla. The World Powerlifting Congress consists of 46 countries worldwide that participate in the annual championships. This year, the event was held from August 15 to 17.

Baghdagyulyan received the highest scores and becoming a 2019 World Champion of AWPC. His competition results were as follows:

1. Squat: 567 lbs
2. Bench Press: 391 lbs
3. Deadlift: 639 lbs

Baghdagyulyan was born on February 23, 1988 in Armenia, the city of Yerevan. He studied at a comprehensive school, Belinsky, from the 1995 to 2005. At the age of 10, Vachagan began playing professional soccer. He played for well-known teams in Armenia, in local team leagues, as well as major leagues.

In 2009, Vachagan graduated from the Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture with a bachelor’s degree in Sports Coaching. At the University, he began to engage in arm wrestling. During a competition between athletes of different professional institutes of the country, he was able to take the first place.

After graduating from university, he served in the army from 2009 to 2011. Continuing his arm wrestling competitions while in the army, he became a two-time champion.

Vachagan became an arm wrestling medalist in the national championship.

Upon returning from the army, he worked at Armenia’s Gold’s Gym, as a fitness trainer, from 2011 to 2013. In 2013, he received became certified as an international fitness trainer.

Between 2013 and 2017, he worked at the Mega Sport fitness center in St. Petersburg Russia.

After leaving his position at Mega Sport, Vachagan began working at Armenia’s Gold’s Gym as a Pro Master Trainer.

In 2017, he received the title “Master of Sports of International Class” from the Minister of Sports of Armenia.

Vachagan’s accomplishments include:

1. Master of Sports of international class in deadlift
2. Master of sports in the bench press
3. Master of sports in powerlifting
4. Prizewinner of St. Petersburg in the bench press (2015)
5. Winner of the European Deadlift (2015)
6. Champion of St. Petersburg in deadlift
7. Absolute champion of the Northwestern Federal District in deadlift (2016)
8. Absolute winner of St. Petersburg Powerlifting (2017)
9. Winner of the Russian Open Deadlift Championship (2016)
10. Winner of the World Cup of Deadlifts (Moscow, Russia) (2017)
11. Prizewinner of the World Deadlift Championship (Kursk, Russia 2016)
12. Winner of the St. Petersburg Powerlifting Cup (2017)
13. 3rd place in deadlift, at the 35th WPC Powerlifting World Championship among professionals (U.S., Orlando 2018)
14. 1st place in the AWPC World Powerlifting Championship 2019 (U.S., Orlando) with the results of 1598 lbs