Category: 2024

                                        Wednesday, February 7, 2024


Pashinian Again Defends Plans For New Constitution

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - A bodyguard stands near Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian as he speaks in 
the Armenian parliament, Yerevan, February 7, 2024.


Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian defended his plans to try to enact a new Armenian 
constitution on Wednesday in the face of continuing opposition claims that he 
wants to make more concessions to Azerbaijan.

Pashinian denied any connection between the plans and a peace treaty currently 
discussed by Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“There is an agreed article in the text of the peace treaty, which says that the 
parties cannot refer to their own laws to avoid fulfilling any obligations under 
this treaty. So the issue here is not about the peace treaty at all,” he told 
opposition lawmakers during his government’s question-and-answer session in the 
parliament.

Some of those lawmakers have been allowed by the Armenian Foreign Ministry to 
read written proposals on the treaty exchanged by Yerevan and Baku in recent 
months. One of them, Gegham Manukian, said the clause cited by Pashinian was 
imposed by the Azerbaijani side and runs counter to Armenia’s current 
constitution. This is why, he said, Pashinian wants to the change the 
constitution.

The premier responded by accusing Manukian of misleading the public and saying 
that he and the other opposition deputies will no longer have access to details 
of the negotiation process. He went on to again criticize a 1990 Armenian 
declaration of independence, saying that Armenia cannot make peace with 
Azerbaijan as long as it is guided by that document.

The declaration cited in a preamble to the current constitution refers to a 1989 
unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then 
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and calls for international recognition of 
the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on February 1 that Armenia should remove 
that reference and amend other documents “infringing on Azerbaijan’s territorial 
integrity” if it wants to cut a peace deal with his country. Armenian opposition 
leaders portrayed Aliyev’s statement as further proof that Pashinian wants to 
effectively declare the 1990 declaration null and void under pressure from 
Azerbaijan as well as Turkey. They say this is the main aim of the 
constitutional change sought by him.




Opposition Members Ousted From Yerevan City Council

        • Narine Ghalechian

Armenia - Former Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian talks to journalists after being 
stripped of his seat in the city council, February 7, 2024.


The ruling Civil Contract party on Wednesday managed to strip three opposition 
members of Yerevan’s municipal council of their seats with the decisive help of 
two other councilors summoned to an Armenian law-enforcement agency on Tuesday.

The ousted oppositionists include former Mayor Hayk Marutian, whose party 
finished second in last September’s municipal election, and two councilors 
representing the radical opposition Mayr Hayastan alliance.

Civil Contract and its local coalition partner, the Hanrapetutyun party, argue 
that they can no longer sit on the city council because of having skipped most 
of the council sessions and votes. The opposition forces dismiss the 
explanation, saying that their absence was part of legitimate boycotts designed 
to scuttle key decisions made by Mayor Tigran Avinian.

“Why did you not oust dozens of your teammates from the previous council who did 
not attend sessions for years? Because they didn’t challenge you,” Marutian told 
Avinian and his political allies during a heated session preceding a vote on 
their seats.

“You are removing us because we are fighting against you and demanding your 
resignation,” charged Marutian.

“If you don’t attend and speak during sessions why would we want to silence 
you?” countered Suren Grigorian, a deputy mayor affiliated with Civil Contract.

Council members from Mayr Hayastan boycotted the session in protest against what 
they too described as a government bid to silence the opposition. The bloc’s 
leader, Andranik Tevanian, called for a fresh municipal ballot on Tuesday.

Civil Contract and Hanrapetutyun lacked a single vote to oust the oppositionists 
and they predictably secured it from the Public Voice party that was until 
recently led by Vartan Ghukasian, a controversial video blogger based in the 
United States.

Two Public Voice councilors showed up for the session and voted for the ouster 
of the oppositionists. One of them, Vahan Avagian, admitted that they were 
summoned to the Investigative Committee on Tuesday.

“I won’t say why because it’s confidential information,” Avagian told reporters. 
He denied opposition claims that he was pressured to back the ruling party’s 
latest initiative.

Public Voice, which campaigned for the September polls on an opposition 
platform, already decisively helped Civil Contract install Avinian as mayor last 
October. Its nominal chairman, Artak Galstian was arrested last year on charges 
of blackmail and extortion and remains in custody. Ghukasian is wanted by 
law-enforcement authorities on the same charges.




HSBC Announces Exit From Armenia


U.S. -- The entrance to a HSBC Bank branch in New York, 10Aug2011


HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, has announced the sale of its Armenian subsidiary 
which will end its nearly 30-year presence in Armenia.

In a statement issued late on Tuesday, the British bank said it has agreed to 
sell the HSBC Armenia unit to the country’s leading bank, Ardshinbank, in line 
with its “strategy to redeploy capital from less strategic or low-connectivity 
businesses into higher-growth opportunities globally.”

Ardshinbank confirmed the agreement in a separate statement. Neither side 
disclosed the terms of the deal subject to regulatory approvals.

“Ardshinbank looks forward to welcoming HSBC Armenia customers onto our 
award-winning platform and to further delivering on its strategy to accelerate 
growth and expand product offering for clients,” said the bank’s chairman, Artak 
Ananian. He promised a “smooth and fluid transition” for the 30,000 or so 
customers.

Reuters reported last May that HSBC is considering a possible exit from as many 
as a dozen countries after earlier announcements about selling off parts or all 
of its activities in France, Canada, Russia and Greece. HSBC completed the sale 
of its French retail business to CCF on January 1 days after Canada approved the 
acquisition of the bank's Canadian business by Royal Bank of Canada.

Established in 1996, HSBC Armenia is the only local commercial bank controlled 
by a major Western banking group. It currently has total assets worth 290 
billion drams ($720 million) and around 200 billion drams in customer deposits.

HSBC Armenia’s net profit rose from 8 billion drams in 2022 to over 11 billion 
drams ($27 million) last year. By comparison, Ardshinbank reported nearly 63 
billion drams in earnings in 2023.

The 18 banks operating in Armenia nearly tripled their combined profits, to a 
record 253 billion drams, in 2022 amid a dramatic increase in cash flows from 
Russia which followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The figure fell by 9 
percent in 2023, according to the Hetq.am publication.




State Radio Chief Censured After Criticizing Pashinian

        • Astghik Bedevian
        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - Garegin Khumarian, director of Public Radio of Armenia.


A state body overseeing Armenian Public Radio has moved to take action against 
its executive director Garegin Khumarian who has openly criticized Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s latest statements on the conflict with Azerbaijan.

In a reportedly pre-recorded interview with the state-funded radio aired on 
February 1, Pashinian again took aim at a 1990 declaration of independence cited 
in a preamble to the Armenian constitution. He claimed that Armenia “will never 
have peace” with Azerbaijan as long as there is such reference. Accordingly, 
Pashinian defended his plans to try to enact a new constitution that would 
presumably make no mention of the declaration.

Khumarian took issue with Pashinian’s comments in an op-ed article published on 
Public Radio’s website on Monday. The premier, he said, wants to destroy one of 
the pillars of “our political identity” and to “stop us being who we are.”

“We were told that the Turks are strong and the Armenians weak, the Turks 
massacre Armenians,” he wrote. “This syllogism should have ended with the 
deductive conclusion ‘let's get stronger,’ but what was said instead was ‘let's 
stop being Armenians.’”

Khumarian said that this policy will not prevent Azerbaijani aggression against 
Armenia. He went on to accuse Pashinian’s government of failing to rebuild the 
Armenian army since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia’s Council of Public Broadcaster, which appoints the heads of state of 
state television and radio, accused Khumarian late on Tuesday of abusing his 
position to express his personal view on the radio website in an “arbitrary” and 
“unchallenged” way. The council will “examine the conformity of the actions of 
the Public Radio Company director with ethical and legal norms,” it said in a 
statement.

All seven members of the body have been appointed by Pashinian. None of them 
agreed to comment further on Wednesday.

“I don’t agree with that [statement] and am waiting to see what our company’s 
lawyers will say,” Khumarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

The Public Radio chief insisted that he performed his “professional duty” and 
simply commented on Armenia’s “existential” problems that are “a step above 
politics.” He noted that he had previously posted about a dozen articles on the 
same website and none of them got him in trouble with his supervisors.

Pashinian’s plans to change the constitution have also been denounced by his 
political opponents and other critics. They say that say his appeasement 
strategy will not lead to a lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.



Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2024 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

 

                                        Thursday, February 8, 2024

Pashinian Defends His Party Accused Of Shady Campaign Funding

        • Shoghik Galstian

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks at a congress of his Civil 
Contract party, Yerevan, October 29, 2022.


Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has said that his Civil Contract party operates 
transparently in response to a report accusing it of receiving campaign 
donations of “dubious origin” ahead of last September’s municipal elections in 
Yerevan.

The party claimed to have raised 506.5 million drams ($1.25 million) for its 
election campaign from about a thousand donors during a single event organized 
in August.

In an extensive article published last week, the investigative publication 
Infocom.am revealed that the bulk of that sum was generated by donations ranging 
from 1 million to 2.5 million drams, the maximum amount of such contributions 
allowed by Armenian law. It said that their nominal donors included presumably 
non-rich people linked to senior government officials and businesspeople as well 
as ordinary residents of Yerevan who could hardly afford such payments.

When contacted by Infocom reporters, many of those residents claimed to be 
unaware of the hefty sums wired to Pashinian’s party on their behalf through a 
commercial bank owned by Khachatur Sukiasian, a wealthy businessman and 
pro-government lawmaker.

“Their living conditions make us think that they could hardly afford donating 
2.5 million drams ($6,200) to the party,” Lucy Manvelian, the main author of the 
article, told RFE/RL’s Armenian.

There are similar doubts even in the case of other, more affluent donors. They 
include five former officials from the Armenian Ministry of Emergencies. The 2.5 
million drams donated by each of them is a sum comparable to their annual 
salaries.

Armen Pambukhchian, a senior Civil Contract figure, headed the ministry until 
last July. He then managed the ruling party’s Yerevan election campaign.

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets supporters during an election 
campaign rally in Yerevan, September 15, 2023.

Other such donors work for companies belonging to businessmen thought to be on 
good terms with Armenia’s current leadership. Among them are eight senior 
executives of Yeremian Projects, a company that owns dozens of restaurants as 
well as several dairy farms. They too gave Civil Contract 2.5 million drams 
each. The company told Infocom that it has nothing to do with those donations.

“Our sources told us that the company’s money, not the personal money of those 
individuals, was donated,” said Manvelian.

Pashinian was asked about the alleged campaign finance irregularities during his 
government’s question-and-answer session in the parliament on Wednesday. He 
declined to explain the donations deemed suspicious by the investigative 
journalists while denying any lack of financial transparency within his party.

“Did the investigative reporters obtain that from intelligence services?” the 
premier said. “It’s a report based on information taken from the official 
websites of Armenian state bodies. Can transparency be any different from that?”

In fact, none of the websites cited by Pashinian contains any information about 
campaign donations to his party. Civil Contract for months refused to release 
the list of its donors requested by journalists and civic groups. The ruling 
party agreed to do so only after the Yerevan-based Center for the Freedom of 
Information took it to court in December.




Russia Insists On Mediating Armenia-Azerbaijan Talks


RUSSIA -- Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin.


Russia has again urged Armenia to agree to resume Russian-mediated negotiations 
with Azerbaijan and stop pinning its hopes on the West.

In televised remarks publicized on Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail 
Galuzin insisted that there is “no alternative” to Russian mediation of 
Armenian-Azerbaijan peace talks.

“It is under the auspices of Russia, at the initiative of President Vladimir 
Putin that the foundations of the settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan were 
laid,” Galuzin told the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

“We hope that they will realize in Yerevan that the implementation of the 
trilateral [Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani] agreements, rather than efforts to 
involve extra-regional powers, notably the U.S. and the European Union, is the 
most reliable path to the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization,” he said.

In recent months, Moscow has repeatedly offered to host high-level 
Armenian-Azerbaijani talks in an effort to regain the initiative in the 
negotiation process. The Russian Foreign Ministry rebuked the Armenian 
leadership in December for ignoring these offers. It warned that Yerevan’s 
current preference of Western mediation may spell more trouble for the Armenian 
people.

The ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in late January Foreign Minister 
Ararat Mirzoyan has again been invited to visit Moscow to discuss a potential 
peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Mirzoyan has announced no plans for 
such a visit or a trilateral meeting with his Russian and Azerbaijani 
counterparts.

Yerevan hoped, at least until now, that an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty 
will be brokered by the U.S. and/or the EU.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev twice cancelled meetings with Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian which the EU planned to host in October. Azerbaijan’s Foreign 
Minister Jeyhun Bayramov similarly withdrew from a November meeting with 
Mirzoyan in Washington. Baku accused the Western powers of pro-Armenian bias.

Galuzin reiterated Russian claims that the West’s main regional goal is to 
“squeeze Russia out of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, break up the 
existing balance of forces in the South Caucasus and thus create another source 
of instability near Russia’s borders.” He also said Moscow is “always ready to 
provide a platform for Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on the peace treaty.”

Russian-Armenian relations have steadily deteriorated since the 2020 war in 
Nagorno-Karabakh, with Yerevan accusing Moscow of not honoring security 
commitments to its longtime regional ally. Azerbaijan’s recapture of Karabakh 
last September only added to those tensions.




Armenian Minister Blasts ‘Disruptive’ Arrests

        • Artak Khulian

Armenia - Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian attends a conference in Yerevan, 
February 1, 2024.


Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian complained on Thursday about last week’s arrests 
of several of his subordinates, saying that corruption charges brought against 
them are baseless and disrupt the work of his ministry and other government 
agencies.

Speaking during a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan, he accused law-enforcement 
authorities of “punishing people who did not steal” any public funds.

One of Kerobian’s deputies, Ani Ispirian, and several other officials from the 
Ministry of Economy were detained in two criminal investigations jointly 
conducted by Armenia’s Investigative Committee and National Security Service 
(NSS). Most of them, including Ispirian, were moved to house arrest or freed 
pending investigation in the following days.

In of those criminal cases, a ministry official is accused of abusing his or her 
position to help other individuals receive 238 million drams ($590,000) in state 
agribusiness funding in violation of rules set by the ministry. The official was 
not charged with bribery or embezzlement, a fact emphasized by Kerobian.

The minister said that law-enforcement authorities have “paralyzed the work of 
the entire state system.”

“Our agricultural divisions are now wondering how they should continue working 
in order to be sure that their honest work will not be punished in the end,” he 
told Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. “That is why I believe that we need to make 
a cultural change and decide whether we allow people to make mistakes sometimes. 
I am sure, though, that in this case it will turn out that no mistakes were 
really made.”

Pashinian responded ambiguously to the unprecedented complaint: “Was money 
stolen from the budget or not? … If so, then it’s a different matter. If not, 
it’s the kind of mistake which you mentioned.”

Armenia - A fruit orchard in Aragatsotn province, 3Sep2014.

The government grant investigated by the authorities was allocated from a state 
fund tasked with helping private entrepreneurs set up intensive fruit orchards 
in Armenia. The government has provided about 100 billion drams ($248 million) 
in such financial aid since 2018. It decided on Thursday to extend the scheme by 
two more years despite the criminal case.

The other case stems from a procurement tender that was organized by the 
Ministry of Economy and invalidated by a court last summer. Ministry officials 
are accused of illegally disqualifying an information technology company, 
Harmonia, to make sure that the tender is won by another, larger firm, Synergy 
International Systems, which set a much higher price for its services.

The investigators also arrested last week Synergy’s founder Ashot Hovanesian and 
two current and former employees, drawing condemnation from the Armenian Union 
of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE). The tech association said that 
“unfounded” detentions of “business representatives and other prominent persons” 
are turning Armenia into a “risky country” for local and foreign tech 
entrepreneurs.

On Tuesday, 64 lawmakers representing Pashinian’s Civil Contract party 
petitioned prosecutors to release the three suspects from custody. One of the 
suspects, Ani Gevorgian, is the sister-in-law of Alen Simonian, the Armenian 
parliament speaker and a senior ruling party figure. She remained in custody as 
of Thursday afternoon.

Some commentators claim that Pashinian personally sanctioned the young woman’s 
arrest in a bid to boost his falling approval ratings by showing Armenians that 
he is serious about combatting corruption. Pashinian allies have dismissed such 
claims.



Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2024 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.