The lawmaker, Hovik Aghazarian, was ousted from Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party the previous night.
He was one of the eight officials whom Pashinian told to resign in text messages sent on November 17. All of them except Aghazarian stepped down in the following days. The officials included Argishti Kyaramian, the head of Armenia’s Investigative Committee who bitterly argued with Aghazarian during a parliamentary hearing in October.
The 64-year-old lawmaker, who is a veteran member of Pashinian’s party, also came under pressure from other senior Civil Contract figures and found himself under criminal investigation. He made clear on Monday that he will not give up his parliament seat. He said he wants to show Armenians that he has not struck a deal with the authorities to avoid prosecution for influence peddling strongly denied by him.
After a late-night meeting chaired by Pashinian on Tuesday, Civil Contract’s governing board said it decided to expel Aghazarian from the party “due to leaks of confidential information of state and partisan importance as well as gross violations of public moral norms.” Aghazarian announced the next morning that he is leaving the party’s parliamentary group but will remain a member of the National Assembly.
“I do not want to put my colleagues in the Civil Contract faction in a difficult situation once again and have them discuss the issue of my removal from the faction,” he said. “I myself announce that I am leaving the Civil Contract faction with great regret.”
The party’s parliamentary leader, Hayk Konjorian, accused Aghazarian of leaking to media sensitive information, including on “national security,” which he said was discussed during Pashinian’s meetings with his political allies held behind the closed doors. Konjorian said the leaks were exposed by data stored in Aghazarian’s mobile phone which Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) confiscated late last month.
Aghazarian said this means ACC investigators shared that data with Pashinian. He told reporters that his lawyer will demand an explanation from the law-enforcement agency.
Asked whether he believes Pashinian accessed his private correspondence illegally, Aghazarian said: “I have scant knowledge of jurisprudence.”
Pashinian confirmed getting such access but denied breaking the law when he spoke in the parliament later in the day. He said vaguely that he received the confidential data from an unspecified government body that got an “instruction” from the ACC related to a “totally different criminal case.” He said the agency, which is “not quite independent,” shared the data with him after it “encountered information containing threats to state security.” He did not go into details.
When asked by an opposition deputy whether Armenia’s prosecutor-general will ask the National Assembly to lift Aghazarian’s immunity from prosecution, Pashinian replied: “Yes, the bastion of democracy must find political, moral, and other levers to deprive a deputy, who has crossed such red lines, of the mandate given by the people. And do not doubt for a moment that all legal means will be used to achieve that goal.”
The Office of the Prosecutor-General did not immediately clarify whether it is planning to indict Aghazarian.
The ACC chief, Sasun Khachatrian, as well as the head of Armenia’s judicial oversight body, Karen Andreasian, also resigned on November 18 at the behest of Pashinian. Opposition leaders and legal experts portrayed the resignations as further proof that Pashinian directs the work of law-enforcement and judicial bodies in breach of Armenia’s laws. The ruling party’s apparent access to Aghazarian’s phone data is bound to give the critics more ammunition.
The premier insisted on November 22 that he had “political, moral and legal” authority to “ask” Andreasian, the country’s top judicial officer, to step down.