Gevorg Papoyan replaced Vahan Kerobian, a former businessman who resigned on February 14 two days before being put under house arrest on corruption charges denied by him. Civil Contract’s governing board formally approved Pashinian’s choice of the new minister late last month.
Papoyan, 37, joined Pashinian’s political team and was first elected to the Armenian parliament in 2018 a few months after the “velvet revolution.”
A graduate of the Armenian State Economics University, he previously worked, according to his official biography, as a marketing specialist in a number of little-known firms. He headed until this month the Armenian parliament’s standing committee on finance and budgetary affairs.
Incidentally, Papoyan is a former member of ex-President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), having apparently joined it at the age of 18. He has downplayed his HHK membership, calling it “fictitious” and saying that he left the former ruling party in 2007 even before Sarkisian was first elected president. However, HHK records show that he remained a party member until 2018.