Marutian was ousted by the city council last December after falling out with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Just days after his removal, the State Oversight Service (SOS), which is headed by a staunch Pashinian loyalist, began auditing the municipality’s financial operations.
The SOS claimed late on Thursday to have found evidence of various “violations” worth a combined 8.5 billion drams ($20 million). It said the bulk of the alleged financial damage to the state resulted from a miscalculation of Yerevan’s property and land tax base.
The SOS said nothing about Marutian’s involvement in the alleged irregularities. Nor did it clarify whether it believes the ex-mayor or other Yerevan officials personally benefited from them.
The government agency sent the findings of its inspection to Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General. The law-enforcement agency will now look into them and decide whether they warrant a formal criminal investigation.
Marutian did not react to the allegations as of Friday afternoon. There was also no reaction from Yerevan’s current mayor, Hrachya Sargsian. The latter served as a deputy mayor during Marutian’s tenure.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (L) and his My Step bloc's mayoral candidate Hayk Marutian attend an election campaign rally in Yerevan, 20 September 2018.
Marutian, who used to be a close political ally of Pashinian, commented scathingly on July 1 after several pro-government websites alleged that the mayor’s office embezzled or misused otherwise as much as $40 million on his watch. He suggested that the allegations are aimed at discouraging him from participating in the next municipal elections.
“Guys -- and also girls -- I have made no decision yet on participating or not participating in the next Yerevan elections. You can breathe a sigh of relief and calm down,” the ex-mayor wrote on Facebook.
Marutian himself accused Pashinian’s administration of corruption on December 22 as Yerevan’s Council of Elders deposed him in a vote of no confidence initiated by its pro-government majority.
He claimed that during his three-year tenure he routinely received phone calls from unnamed “various officials” asking for construction permits, land allocations, tax advantages and other privileges for “people close to them.” He did not name any of them, saying only that he rejected all such requests.
Marutian, 45, is a former TV comedian who actively participated in the “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power in May 2018. Pashinian chose the popular entertainer to lead his bloc’s list of candidates in the last municipal elections held in September 2018
Relations between the two men deteriorated after the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Marutian increasingly distanced himself from the prime minister’s political team and pointedly declined to support it during snap parliamentary elections held in June 2021.