Major-General Grigori Khachaturov was already detained last month on charges of money laundering strongly denied by him. A court of first instance freed him hours later.
A Court of Appeals judge overturned that decision following an appeal filed by a prosecutor overseeing the high-profile case.
Khachaturov is the former commander of the Armenian army’s Third Corps mostly stationed in northern Tavush province bordering Azerbaijan. He received a major military award and was promoted to the rank of major-general after leading a successful military operation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in July 2020, less than three months before the outbreak of the six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Khachaturov was among four dozen high-ranking military officers who accused Pashinian’s government of incompetence and misrule and demanded its resignation in February 2021. The unprecedented demand was welcomed by the Armenian opposition but condemned as a coup attempt by Pashinian.
In a separate statement issued in March 2021, Khachaturov said “every day and hour” of Pashinian’s rule “erodes” Armenia’s national security. He was fired a few months later.
The charges leveled against the general stem from a controversial criminal case opened against Seyran Ohanian, a former defense minister who now leads the parliamentary group of the main opposition Hayastan alliance.
Ohanian was charged earlier in February with illegally allowing the privatization of properties that belonged to the Armenian Defense Ministry. He rejects the accusations as politically motivated.
The National Security Service (NSS) says that Khachaturov “de facto” acquired one of those properties at a knockdown price and used it for obtaining a bank loan worth 18 million drams ($45,000). One of his lawyers has described the money laundering charge as “laughable.”
Khachaturov’s father Yuri was the chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff from 2008-2016. He served as secretary general of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization when the current authorities indicted him as well as Ohanian and former President Robert Kocharian in 2018 over their alleged role in a 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Armenia’s Constitutional Court declared coup charges brought against them unconstitutional in 2021.
Yuri Khachaturov and his second son actively participated in last year’s antigovernment protests staged by the country’s main opposition forces.