Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian toured Kapan and other parts of Armenia’s Syunik province in late June after more than month-long antigovernment protests organized by him in Yerevan. Galstanian was publicly greeted there by the town’s pro-opposition mayor, Gevorg Parsian.
Parsian suggested on Wednesday that this is the reason why investigators recently raided his office and confiscated documents relating to public procurements handled by the local government.
“Yes, I consider political processes [behind the criminal case] possible,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The investigators are specifically looking into construction contracts awarded to a local company owned by Parsian’s father. They are also conducting a separate inquiry into the company set up in 1998 and called Norogshin.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee has not released any details of the probes. It has not charged anyone so far.
Parsian insisted that he did not abuse his powers to make sure that Norogshin wins construction tenders organized by the Kapan municipality. He also denied any conflicts of interest.
“Many construction firms participate in procurement processes here,” he said. “The Kapan municipality has signed contracts with many construction firms, including Norogshin.”
An Armenian law on public procurement does not ban businesspeople related to town or village mayors from bidding for local procurement contracts. It only stipulates that the mayors cannot sit on commissions selecting the winners of such tenders.
Parsian argued that he has not been a member of the Kapan commission. He claimed that none of its decisions have been ordered by him.
Parsian, 38, has run Syunik’s administrative center since 2018. He was one of the five heads of major communities of the strategic region who demanded Pashinian’s resignation in the wake of the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. They supported former President Robert Kocharian’s opposition bloc in parliamentary elections held in 2021. Unlike the four other mayors, Parsian was not prosecuted in the wake of those polls won by Pashinian’s party.
Only one of the indicted Syunik mayors, Arush Arushanian of Goris, has retained his post since then. Still, earlier this month, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison for defying an earlier court ruling that barred him from holding public office for five years. Arushanian will remain free pending higher court rulings on his planned appeals against the conviction.