Eleven persons, including a senior local government official, have been charged with buying votes for the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) in last year’s municipal elections in Yerevan, it emerged on Tuesday.
The criminal case stems from irregularities that were reported by the opposition Yelk alliance on eve of the May 2017 elections won by the HHK and its top candidate, Yerevan’s incumbent Mayor Taron Markarian.
Yelk representatives found scandalous documents in a trash bin outside an HHK campaign office in the city’s Arabkir district. Most of them purportedly detailed vote buying operations by government loyalists, including sums of money and guidelines on how to buy votes.
Armenia’s Special Investigative Service (SIS) claimed to have conducted an inquiry. It closed the criminal case in August 2017, citing a lack of evidence.
The SIS launched a fresh probe shortly after one of Yelk’s leaders, Nikol Pashinian, swept to power in a wave of mass protests that brought down Armenia’s HHK-led government in May.
According to a senior official from the law-enforcement agency, Davit Kostandian, SIS investigators have found compelling evidence of vote buying in favor of the HHK. Kostandian said that the illegal operation was led by Hrayr Antonian, the head of a department at Yerevan’s municipal administration, and Stepan Sahakian, the executive director of a supermarket chain owned by an HHK-linked businessman.
The SIS official claimed that Arabkir residents were paid 10,000 drams ($21) each for pledging to vote for the HHK and Mayor Markarian. He did not specify how many votes were bought in this fashion, saying only that Antonian and Sahakian claim to have spent 48 million drams and 15 million drams respectively on vote bribes.
Neither man could be reached for comment on Tuesday. Kostandian said they and the nine other suspects have pleaded guilty to the accusations. Markarian, who resigned as Yerevan mayor under government pressure in July, has not yet been questioned by the SIS, added the official.
Another document found by Yelk in 2017 contained the names of police officers who pledged to earn the HHK a particular number of votes. The document was allegedly faxed from a telephone number belonging to the Armenian police.
Kostandian said that all of those policemen have been questioned by SIS investigators. But he declined to elaborate.
Vote buying was widespread in just about every major election held in Armenia in the last two decades. The HHK, which is headed by former President Serzh Sarkisian, was accused by its opponents and media of heavily relying on the practice in the last parliamentary polls held in April 2017.Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that they were marred by “many credible reports” of vote buying.
The new Pashinian-led government has pledged to prevent vote buying in the snap mayoral elections that will be held in the Armenian capital on Sunday. Earlier this month it pushed through the parliament legal amendments that significantly toughened punishment for the illegal practice.