An investigation initiated by the Department of State Interest Protection of the General Prosecutor’s Office revealed that the 1218 square meter building of the “Mush” cinema in the city of Martuni, Gegharkunik Marz, belonging to the Republic of Armenia, the electrical substation with the area of ​​43.7 square meters, together with the 0.272 ha plot of land, were illegally expropriated to an individual for only 4 million 572 thousand drams under the contract signed on August 14, 2006. According to the study, it was recorded that the cadastral value of the property at the time of expropriation was 33 million 246 thousand 992 AMD. that is, the above-mentioned properties were sold at a price many times lower than the cadastral value. Currently, the cadastral value of the property approximated to the market value is 134 million 250 thousand drams.

RA General Prosecutor’s Office informs about this.

According to the data received at the Prosecutor’s Office, the expropriation process did not take into account the fact that on December 2, 2005, the mayor of Martuni, at the request of the city’s population, on behalf of the members of the community’s council of elders, appealed to the RA Prime Minister, who was acting at that time, asking to hand over the city’s only cinema building to the community in order to properly organize cultural life and youth entertainment.

According to the results of the study, criminal proceedings were initiated in the Anti-corruption Committee on the basis of the report about the crime submitted by the Department of Protection of State Interests.

In addition, on March 25, 2025, the State Interests Protection Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office submitted a lawsuit to the Anti-Corruption Court, demanding to invalidate the sales contract signed on August 14, 2006 between the RA Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs and a natural person.

The claim was based on the fact that the public cinema “Mush” located at 66 Myasnikyan Street, Martuni, Gegharkunik Marz, was sold at a price significantly lower than the market and cadastral values, violating both the property valuation and the legal requirements for the expropriation of state property.

According to the judgment of the anti-corruption court on June 1, 2026, the claim of the General Prosecutor’s Office was satisfied. The contract of expropriation of “Mush” cinema in Martuni, signed between the RA Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs and the citizen on August 14, 2006, was declared invalid.

After the court decision enters into legal force, the building of the “Mush” cinema with an area of ​​1218 square meters, the electric substation with an area of ​​43.7 square meters and the plot of land of 0.272 ha will be returned to the Republic of Armenia.

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The work of recounting votes continues in the Central Electoral Commission of Armenia. The final results of the voting will be published on June 14. Vahagn Hovakimyan, the chairman of the RA CEC, announced this.

According to him, at the current stage, we are mostly talking about technical errors made during data entry. As the Chairman of the Central Election Commission noted, serious inaccuracies were found in only five of the 2005 election precincts. In those cases, lines were omitted during manual data entry in the protocols, a classic “human factor”.

“I want to say once again to dear journalists and citizens of the Republic of Armenia. in fact, only five of the 2,005 sites had input problems. The records are accurate, but an error occurred when entering the data: lines were left out,” Hovakimyan emphasized. One such incident happened in electoral district No. 27. According to Hovakimyan, the error was related to the fatigue of the employee entering the data. Moreover, the actual protocols of the sites have been preserved and published, so the error is easily detected and corrected. The President of the CEC reminded that the results are called preliminary precisely because they are subject to adjustment and verification. “The preliminary results are the ones that still need to be adjusted. Now a recalculation is being carried out in many precincts.”

According to official data, the CEC received very few properly formulated applications for recounting votes. Such applications were received from the “Prosperous Armenia” party, the “Strong Armenia” alliance and the “Wings of Unity” party.

Many other applications were formulated with irregularities (wrong submission, lack of authority, etc.) and, therefore, were not accepted in the prescribed manner. However, in many cases, the regional election commissions started recounting the votes on their own initiative. The process is particularly active in Yerevan. Recounting is planned in almost all electoral districts of the capital, primarily at the initiative of a candidate from one of the opposition forces, who has expressed such a wish. Recalculation is taking place according to the deadlines set by the law (until Friday at 14:00). Theoretically, any candidate or proxy has the right to request a recount in all the polling stations where he was present at the summary of the results, but this must be done strictly in accordance with the law.

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American congressman Brad Sherman proposed demanding Azerbaijan to immediately release all Armenian prisoners. This is reported by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

In the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he proposed an amendment to the House Diplomatic Service Act (H.R. 9086), which “calls on Azerbaijan to immediately and unconditionally release all Armenian prisoners of war and political prisoners.”

The politician reminded about Azerbaijan’s military aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh and the ethnic cleansing of more than 100 thousand Armenians living there for 2 thousand years. He also pointed out the footage spread on the Internet documenting cases of extrajudicial execution of Armenian prisoners.

“Given all of this, it is extremely important that the United States demand from Baku the immediate release of all captured Armenians,” he stated in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.

Sherman also noted that the release of the hostages is directly related to the efforts made by US President Donald Trump to establish peace in the South Caucasus.

“As President Trump continues his efforts to ensure lasting peace in the South Caucasus, the release of Armenian prisoners of war and political prisoners would be an important step on that path,” he said.

Republican Brian Mast, chairman of the committee, supported the proposal.

A roll call vote on this amendment is now expected. If accepted, the project will be transferred to the House of Representatives for discussion.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) welcomed this decision of the bipartisan commission.

“The illegal detention of Armenian hostages in Azerbaijan is a real crisis of human rights, which requires decisive steps from the Congress. We highly appreciate the commission’s chairman Mast’s support for Sherman’s initiative and the commission’s bipartisan firm position regarding the immediate and unconditional release of the prisoners,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hambaryan.

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PAP Chairman Gagik Tsarukyan was interrogated by the Investigative Committee yesterday. He denied the new accusation against him, calling it groundless. This was reported by his lawyer Emin Khachatryan, NEWS.am writes. 

According to Khachatryan, the criminal proceedings were initiated in 2019, but Gagik Tsarukyan was not aware of the criminal proceedings until yesterday. Yesterday, a criminal prosecution was initiated against Tsarukyan without the consent of the CEC, and the ban on absence was imposed as a preventive measure.

The lawyer emphasized that the prosecutor’s office was obliged to apply to the Central Electoral Commission first, because Gagik Tsarukyan is a deputy candidate, therefore he has immunity.

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There is no clear agreement on the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, said Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian President.

“So far there is no clear agreement. You know that an announcement on the results of the elections is expected on the 14th of the month. You know that many participants of the elections intend to appeal, there will be a recount, etc., that is, the situation is quite complicated and long-lasting,” said Peskov, answering RIA Novosti’s question about the plans for a possible meeting between Putin and Pashinyan.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party, which is in favor of Armenia’s joining the European Union, failed to gather 50 percent of the votes needed to form the government. However, it will receive the required number of mandates due to the redistribution of the mandates for national minorities and the votes of the forces that did not enter the parliament.

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PAP leader’s press spokesperson Iveta Tonoyan commented on the statement of former CP member Hovik Aghazaryan that Khachatur Sukiasyan is negotiating with Gagik Tsarukyan that PAP should be part of the coalition and CP should be given the opportunity to choose constitutional laws and whether or not PAP will enter the National Assembly depends on the outcome of these negotiations.

“I will describe what Hovik Aghazaryan is doing with just one word: villainy.

In the days when the “Prosperous Armenia” party is fighting against the monstrous injustice carried out against it by using all legal tools in order to protect the vote of every voter, carry out recounts and restore the true image of the people’s will in the last elections, former head of state Hovik Aghazaryan is busy with, to put it mildly, obscene gossip. The purpose of the order is not even essential.

I warn that lawsuits will be filed against all those who will try to play with our good reputation,” Tonoyan wrote on his Facebook page.

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Former governor of Kotayk Karapet Guloyan was placed under house arrest with bail of 20 million drams. 

Let’s remind that the prosecutor initiated a public criminal prosecution against the ex-governor of Kotayk Karapet Guloyan for committing an illegal act with the property under embargo.

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Gohar Meloyan, the representative of the “Strong Armenia” bloc, stated that during the process of studying the protocols and recounting the votes, the political force has already managed to restore a part of the votes that were lost due to the errors that occurred during the processing of the election results.

According to him, at the moment the representatives of the alliance have analyzed the data of about 900 out of 2005 polling stations. “These are the votes that we have already managed to return. We find inconsistencies in protocol lines, errors in documents and cases of incorrect data entry into the system,” Meloyan stated, presenting a table according to which, as a result of the recount, “Strong Armenia” managed to return 567 voters’ votes. He emphasized that the verification of the results is ongoing, and the published data reflect only the interim picture.

Meloyan claims that during the analysis, the representatives of the bloc found errors not only in the results of “Strong Armenia”, but also in favor of the ruling “Civil Agreement” party. According to him, cases were recorded when the number of votes of the ruling party was indicated not only higher than what was actually reflected in the primary documents, but often zero votes mysteriously turned into 500-700 votes.

“In one of the precincts, 717 votes were entered into the system in favor of the CP, when the actual figure should have been 0. In another precinct, 570 votes were indicated, while there were also 0 votes in favor of the ruling power. These are only the data of the first 900 polling stations, from 2005. We are still working on the materials,” the representative of the alliance emphasized. In total, as of now, the alliance has found 4,586 votes attributed to the ruling party.

Answering the journalists’ question whether he considers the discovered inconsistencies to be accidental mistakes or the result of purposeful actions, Meloyan stated that he is inclined to the second option. According to him, many controversial numbers were entered already after receiving the data from the polling stations. “Yes, I think that there are features of intentionality here, because it concerns the data that was received directly from the polling stations, and the inconsistencies arose already at the stage of their processing,” said the representative of the alliance.

Meloyan called the quality of electoral envelopes another serious problem of the current elections. According to him, the material of the envelopes was so transparent that in a number of cases it allowed to determine which particular ballot was inside. “A person was voting, and from the envelope it was visible who he voted for. This is already a violation of the principle of secrecy of voting,” he stated. Meloyan claims that such a situation could create additional pressure on voters and lead to their identification.

The representative of “Strong Armenia” also expressed concern that the proxies and members of the committee in individual precincts could be employees of local administrations. According to him, in the conditions when it was possible to see the selected ballot paper through the envelope, it created a risk of putting pressure on the citizens. “In many cases, people could be in the center of attention because of which electoral list they voted for, especially if there were representatives of local authorities or community workers in the precinct,” Meloyan stated.

According to him, the alliance intends to continue the study of all detected violations and achieve that the results of the recount are taken into account when summarizing the final results of the elections.

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2026 The June 7 National Assembly elections were held with many violations of the “Electoral Code” and do not reflect the will of the people. This was stated in the statement issued by the “Land of Living” party.

“Throughout the campaign and in the months leading up to it, the representatives of the government exerted pressure on the voters in the form of dismissal, arrest and other threats, especially to the persons who either themselves or their family members were in any way involved in the electoral activities of the opposition forces.

• Opposition candidates and officials of election headquarters were unjustifiably arrested, detained, and summoned for lengthy interrogations in order to exclude them from the electoral process.

• Although the government officials were on vacation, they continued to act from their official positions during the campaign, indirectly performing their functions.

• Public television during the campaign and before it carried out systematic anti-propaganda against the opposition forces, repeating the anti-propaganda theses of the government internet media.

• On election day, in many precincts and in their vicinity, in the presence of representatives of the government, pressure was exerted on the free choice of voters.

Although in the precincts, the actual voting process took place mainly within the framework of the law, but according to our analyzes and estimates, at least 130,000 of the citizens participating in the elections chose the ruling party under duress, avoiding personal, financial, social, psychological and other problems.

The mentioned violations were also recorded by the OSCE observation mission. The above had a significant impact on the election results. In case of free and fair elections, the ruling party would not be able to get the majority of mandates.

Thus, the “Land of Living” party considers the government formed based on the election results to be illegitimate.”

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“A 12-year-old student of Arpi Trpanchyan secondary school in Orgov village of Ashtaraki community ended up in the hospital after a school excursion. According to the medical report available to me, narcotics were found in the child’s body.” Karine Torosyan, president of “Give Your Hand” community development NGO, alerted about this on her social network page.

According to Karine Torosyan, according to the available data, we are talking about a high dose, and the health condition of the child is assessed as serious.

“Dear Mrs. Sargsyan, how many children must appear in the hospital in order to understand that this is not an isolated case, but an alarm for the whole society?”

A 12-year-old student of Arpi Trpanchyan secondary school in Orgov village of Ashtarak community ended up in the hospital after a school excursion.

According to the medical report available to me, narcotics were found in the child’s body.

According to the available data, it is about a high dose, and the child is currently in the hospital in a serious condition with memory loss. In addition, the doctors confirmed that the child had first aid. It is assumed that it was transmitted to the child through sweets.

Mrs. Sargsyan, you said: if there are facts, present them.

Here are the facts:

The 12-year-old child is in the hospital.

There is the medical report.

At this point, I don’t care who the principal is, who the teacher is, or how you’re going to find the culprit.

I am interested in only one question.

Who will answer for the fact that a 12-year-old child is in a hospital bed today, in serious condition, with memory loss, and narcotics were found in his body?

Who poisoned the child?

Who took away the rest of that family and the health of the child?

Who will answer to the parents?

And most importantly,

Who will guarantee that another child will not suffer the same fate tomorrow?

I request and demand to immediately take the case under special control, to reveal all the circumstances of the incident, to find the source of the drug and to punish all the culprits with the full severity of the law,” wrote the president of the NGO.

Narek Sargsyan, spokesperson of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, responding to Karine Torosyan’s post, said that they have received the report, measures are being implemented.

“The incident is under the control of the police leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As soon as I have additional information, I will let you know,” wrote Narek Sargsyan.

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