The Aravot daily, which also has a major news website, had informed readers that the investigative report will be posted on YouTube at 9 p.m. on Tuesday. It promised to reveal “how and how much the revolutionary officials got rich in a warring country” in 2020, which saw a disastrous war with Azerbaijan.
According to Anna Israelian, the paper’s online news editor, the account was hacked less than two hours before the planned publication time. The unknown hackers also deleted its entire video content published for the last 12 years.
Israelian said cyber security experts are now trying to restore the paper’s access to its YouTube channel. Aravot has also appealed to YouTube and its parent company, Google, for help, she said.
Israelian did not exclude that the Armenian government was behind the cyber attack. She noted that shortly after Pashinian swept to power in 2018 some of his loyalists publicized instructions on how to disable online media outlets critical of his administration.
“Those individuals were later given high-ranking positions. Some of them are now parliament deputies,” the prominent journalist told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia’s leading press freedom groups on Thursday condemned the “cyber crime” and demanded that law-enforcement authorities identify and punish its perpetrators.
“This is not the first time when, by a worrying coincidence, criticism of the authorities is followed by hacking attacks on online platforms,” they said in a joint statement.
Vahagn Aleksanian, a deputy chairman of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, categorically denied any government involvement in the hack. He downplayed the significance of the Aravot exposé, saying that its prior announcement attracted little interest on social media.
Aravot published the 9-minute report on its Facebook page on Wednesday evening. It details acquisitions by several senior government officials and pro-government lawmakers of expensive apartments and other real estate mostly carried out in 2020.
The authors of the video emphasized the fact these individuals had far more modest assets before the 2018 “velvet revolution,” which was driven in large measure by public anger at widespread government corruption.
Other Armenian media outlets have also accused members of Pashinian’s entourage of enriching themselves or their cronies in recent years.
Last month, Pashinian publicly urged senior officials to sue publications “falsely” accusing them of illicit enrichment. He said that such reports contributed to a drop in Armenia’s position in an annual corruption survey conducted by Transparency International.
Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Pashinian again claimed to have eliminated “systemic corruption” in the country. Some civic activists disputed the claim.
