Avinian and eight other city officials traveled to Los Angeles late last month on what they called a working visit. It emerged last week that the trip cost the city at least 26.1 million drams ($66,500). Almost 7.7 million drams ($19,500) of that was spent on Avinian’s business class ticket.
Hayk Marutian, a former Yerevan mayor leading the largest opposition group in the city council, exposed the airfare on Wednesday during a live debate with Avinian hosted by the online broadcaster Factor.am. The revelation drew strong condemnation from other opposition figures, media commentators and Armenia’s leading anticorruption watchdog.
Avinian on Monday again blamed “irresponsible” officials from the mayor’s office for the expensive purchase and claimed to have found out the price of his air ticket after the trip to the U.S.
“To be honest, I too was a bit astonished by those figures,” the 35-year-old mayor told a weekly meeting of senior municipality officials.
Avinian, who is a senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, went on to announce that he will use his personal money to fully compensate taxpayers for his air travel expenses. He did not say why he did not do that before the debate with Marutian and the resulting uproar.
The main focus of the debate was the upcoming sharp increase in the cost of public transportation in the Armenian capital. The mayor’s office on Friday postponed the unpopular price hike by one month, until February 1.
The ticket compensation promised by Avinian is a sum comparable to his annual salary. The mayor said that people interested in the source of that money should “look at my income declaration.”
Avinian’s extended family and his father in particular own at least one company that has done well since the 2018 “velvet revolution” in the country. In an investigative article published last month, Civilnet.am suggested that the mayor, who served as deputy prime minister from 2018-2021, used his positions to help the agribusiness company receive government grants and loan subsidies. Avinian denounced the “false article” and pledged to sue the publication during the debate with Marutian.