Ani Ispirian was taken into custody along with several other government officials and business executives prosecuted over a procurement tender administered by the Ministry of Economy last summer. She was sacked just hours before her arrest.
It is still not clear whether Ispirian denies or admits the accusations. Her lawyer, Mamikon Muradian, refused to comment on them when he was approached an RFE/RL correspondent following a Yerevan court’s decision to allow the house arrest.
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian effectively denied the corruption charges brought against his current and former subordinates when he spoke to reporters on Thursday. Kerobian refused to comment further on Friday.
The ministry officials are accused of illegally disqualifying an information technology company, Harmonia, from a procurement tender to make sure that it is won by another, larger firm, Synergy International Systems, which set a much higher price for its services. Synergy’s founder and two current and former employees are also under arrest. One of them, Ani Gevorgian, is the wife of parliament speaker Alen Simonian’s brother Karlen.
Law-enforcement authorities opened a criminal case into the tender even though an Armenian court invalidated it last August following a lawsuit filed by Harmonia. Synergy did not win a fresh tender called by the ministry shortly afterwards.
This fact, coupled with the authorities’ decision to arrest the young woman related to Simonian, fueled speculation about political motives behind the high-profile case. Some media outlets claimed that the controversial speaker, who is a senior member of the ruling Civil Contract party, is increasingly at odds with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political team. The party’s deputy chairman, Vahagn Aleksanian, denied this.
Simonian himself has not publicly commented on the arrests so far. Still, he made a point of posting a photograph of him, his brother and arrested sister-in-law on his Facebook page on Thursday.