The criminal case stems from the 2010 privatization of a hydroelectric plant located in Armenia’s northern Lori province. It was sold to a private firm for for 3.6 billion drams ($7.5 million) nearly a decade after being handed over to the Armenian Defense Ministry.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) said in May 2019 that the privatization caused “substantial damage” to the state because the DzoraHEK plant was in fact worth an estimated 8 billion drams ($16.8 million) in 2010. It subsequently indicted Ohanian, who served as defense minister from 2008 to 2016 and is now a leading member of the country’s main opposition alliance.
Ohanian has strongly denied any responsibility for the deal, saying that it was negotiated by the Armenian Energy Ministry and approved by the former government.
Last year the SIS also brought criminal charges against Robert Nazarian, a former chairman of the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC), and three other former members of the body regulating utilities. It claimed that they abused their positions to let DzoraHEK’s new owner make extra profits.
An SIS statement issued in August 2020 implied that the 26-megawatt facility received privileged treatment from the PSRC because it was owned by “individuals linked to former President Serzh Sarkisian’s son-in-law Mikael Minasian.” DzoraHEK was sold to another private company, reportedly owned by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian, in 2016.
Nazarian and the three other former utility regulators rejected the accusations before the law-enforcement agency concluded its investigation this spring.
Armenia - Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian addresses an opposition rally in Yerevan, March 1, 2021.
A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor-General said on Friday that it has refused to endorse the results of the probe and has sent the case back to the SIS for further investigation. He said the SIS must shed more light on “a number of important circumstances” of the case but did not elaborate.
It also emerged that Borya Chilingarian, an SIS official leading the investigation, recently offered the five suspects to drop the charges on the grounds of a statute of limitations. They rejected the offer, however, demanding that the investigators formally recognize their innocence.
“[Chilingarian] wanted to hear our position about closing or not closing [the criminal case] because of the statute of limitations,” Ohanian’s lawyer, Karen Mezhlumian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “After Mr. Ohanian refused, he sent the indictment to a prosecutor [overseeing the probe] so that the prosecutor endorses it and sends it to court.”
Chilingarian insisted earlier this year that SIS investigators have collected sufficient incriminating evidence.