The executive director of a pan-Armenian charity headquartered in Yerevan tendered his resignation on Monday one week after being accused of embezzling its funds.
Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) arrested Ara Vartanian, who has managed the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund for the last ten years, on July 3. It said that he admitted using money mostly donated by the Armenian Diaspora for online gambling and other “personal purposes.”
“In the past week alone, Vartanian transferred about 14 million drams ($29,000) from a bank card of the fund to online casinos,” read an NSS statement. “That amount totaled about 130 million drams in the period from 2016 to 2018.”
A court in Yerevan agreed to free Vartanian on bail on July 5. The NSS did not object to the court’s decision. A lawyer for Vartanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) that his client denies the accusations of embezzlement and abuse of power levelled against him.
Nevertheless, Vartanian submitted a letter of resignation to President Armen Sarkissian when he was received by the latter on Monday. Sarkissian is the chairman of Hayastan’s Board of Trustees.
The board also comprises Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, other senior Armenian state officials, Catholicos Garegin II as well as prominent members of Armenian communities around the world. It will almost certainly accept Vartanian’s resignation.
Hayastan has implemented over $350 million worth of mainly infrastructure projects in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh since being set up in 1992. In recent years the fund has partly financed, among other things, the construction of a second highway connecting Karabakh to Armenia. The 116-kilometer-long road was inaugurated last year.
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