A Yerevan court of first instance unexpectedly ordered the move on December 30. It also required Karapetian to post bail worth 4 billion drams ($10,500) and banned him from making political statements from home. Prosecutors appealed against the decision.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals accepted the prosecutors’ demand on Friday as the 60-year-old tycoon received treatment in hospital for what his lawyers described as pneumonia caused by a coronavirus infection.
The lawyers said earlier this week that he caught the disease in prison due to poor conditions there. They accused the prison administration of neglecting his health problems.
“They did not heat Samvel Karapetian's cell in any way,” one of them, Armen Faroyan, told a news conference. “It got to the point that he had health problems. He constantly had colds and no one could understand what it is before he was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia.”
Karapetian was arrested in June hours after condemning Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s attempts to depose the top clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church and vowing to defend it “in our way.” The statement provoked a series of furious social media posts by Pashinian. The latter pledged to “deactivate” the tycoon believed to be the world’s richest Armenian.
“Now I will interfere with you in my own way, you scoundrel … I hope the taste of the state will remain in your mouth,” Pashinian wrote shortly before Karapetian’s arrest.
Law-enforcement authorities claim Karapetian called for a violent overthrow of the government. They also charged him with tax evasion, fraud and money laundering in July after he decided to set up a new opposition movement that will run in the elections due in June 2026.
The movement unveiled in August and named Mer Dzevov (In Our Way) is now expected to be one of the ruling Civil Contract party’s main election challengers. In a November 19 statement issued from prison, Karapetian expressed confidence that it will remove Armenia’s ruling “small clique” from power.
Born and raised in Armenia, Karapetian has mainly lived Russia since the early 1990s, making there a fortune estimated by the Forbes magazine at over $4 billion. He has financed many charity projects in Armenia as well as Nagorno-Karabakh and made lavish donations to the church.
Although Pashinian’s political allies have accused Karapetian of plotting to topple the Armenian government on the Kremlin’s orders, Moscow has refrained from openly calling for his release. Still, the Russian Foreign Ministry signaled on December 16 concerns about his continuing detention.