Tsarukian said the statue is “almost ready” as he spoke with journalists at a workshop where it is hewn.
“You must be looking and seeing that there is nothing like this in the world, that ours must be the best, the most beautiful and imposing in the world,” he said.
Tsarukian announced plans to place such a statue on Mount Hatis in January 2022, saying that it will serve as a “guardian of our country and people” and impress the outside world. The Armenian Apostolic Church said the idea is inappropriate and goes against Armenian Christian tradition. That did not stop Tsarukian from organizing a contest for the statue and announcing its winner in May 2022.
The statue designed by sculptor Armen Manvelian will stand 33 meters (108.3 feet) tall atop a 44-meter pedestal to be perched on Hatis. The mountain located about 30 kilometers northeast of Yerevan itself stands more than 2,500 meters above sea level.
The Armenian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture ordered a halt to construction of the monument in July 2022 one day after it officially began in the presence of a government member. Echoing concerns voiced by archeologists, the ministry said Hatis is home to about two dozen ancient monuments legally protected by the state. It singled out the ruins of a Bronze Age fortress discovered at the mountain’s summit by an Armenian-Italian archeological expedition in 2019.
Tsarukian said that he has amended the project to address the ministry’s concerns. He pledged to preserve the monuments and even refurbish some of them.
Still, the 67-year-old tycoon would not say when the statue will be erected. “That depends on the will of God,” he said vaguely.
The Ministry of Education has not yet made any statements giving the green light for the project. Nor has the Armenian Apostolic Church publicly dropped its objections.
Tsarukian is the founding leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) that was the leading opposition force in the country’s former parliament. It challenged Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and demanded his resignation even before the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Tsarukian was charged with vote buying and arrested in September 2020 just days before the outbreak of the war. The BHK leader, who rejected the accusations as politically motivated, was freed on bail one month later.
Tsarukian has kept a low profile since his party failed to win any parliament seats in the last general elections held in June 2021. Last November, the Armenian authorities moved to confiscate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets belonging to him and his family. They invoked a controversial law that allows them to seize money, properties and companies deemed to have been acquired illegally.