Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Court refused to allow the National Security Service (NSS) to hold Grigori Khachaturov in detention pending investigation. He walked free in the courtroom as a result.
Khachaturov is the former commander of the Armenian army’s Third Corps mostly stationed in northern Tavush province bordering Azerbaijan. He received a major military award and was promoted to the rank of major-general after leading a successful military operation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in July 2020, less than three months before the outbreak of the six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Khachaturov was among four dozen high-ranking military officers who accused Pashinian’s government of incompetence and misrule and demanded its resignation in February 2021. The unprecedented demand was welcomed by the Armenian opposition but condemned as a coup attempt by Pashinian.
Khachaturov insisted on the prime minister’s resignation in a separate statement issued in March 2021. He said that “every day and hour” of Pashinian’s rule “erodes” Armenia’s national security. He was fired a few months later.
The NSS detained Khachaturov late on Monday on charges of money laundering stemming from a controversial criminal case opened against Seyran Ohanian, a former defense minister who now leads the parliamentary group of the main opposition Hayastan alliance.
Ohanian was charged earlier this month with illegally privatizing in the past two buildings in Yerevan and two other, disused properties that belonged to the Armenian Defense Ministry. He rejects the accusations as politically motivated.
Law-enforcement authorities say that Khachaturov “de facto” acquired one of those properties at a knockdown price and used it for obtaining a bank loan worth 18 million drams ($45,000). The retired general’s lawyer, Hakob Yenokian, described the money laundering charge as “laughable.”
Several opposition figures voiced support for Khachaturov as they gathered outside the Yerevan-based court during a hearing on his pre-trial arrest sought by the NSS. They claimed that Pashinian is trying to punish the general for his and his close relatives’ anti-government views.
Khachaturov’s father Yuri was the chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff from 2008-2016. He served as secretary general of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization when the current authorities indicted him as well as Ohanian and former President Robert Kocharian in 2018 over their alleged role in the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Armenia’s Constitutional Court declared coup charges leveled against them unconstitutional in 2021.
Yuri Khachaturov and his second son actively participated in last year’s antigovernment protests staged by the country’s main opposition forces.
