The Armenian Weightlifting Federation headed by the official, Arayik Harutiunian, filed a relevant lawsuit last week. It claims that Tsarukian runs the HAOK illegally because his tenure ended last September and he has failed to organize a new election of the committee’s chairman in a timely manner.
Harutiunian said on Thursday that Tsarukian, who has headed the HAOK since 2004, cannot seek reelection because he will turn 70 in November. The HAOK statutes set no age limits for the holder of the position.
Tsarukian’s spokeswoman, Iveta Tonoyan, hit out at Harutiunian earlier this week. But she did not comment on the violations alleged by Pashinian’s top aide and longtime political ally.
“It would be good if someone asked Arayik Harutiunian: do you have the right to be the chairman of the Weightlifting Federation?” said Tonoyan. “What is your connection with sports in general? What is your sporting background? What knowledge do you have about weightlifting?”
Elinar Vartanian, an opposition lawmaker allied to Tsarukian, said, for her part, that the government attempt to install a new HAOK head is politically motivated. Harutiunian denied that.
Vartanian warned that Tsarukian’s removal from the HAOK would spark an international scandal. She seemed to allude to the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is strongly opposed to any government interference in the work of national committees. The IOC has sanctioned some countries for that reason.
Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) is widely regarded as one of the three main opposition contenders in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections. In a series of statements made earlier this year, senior members of the ruling Civil Contract party signaled their concerns that the BHK and opposition blocs led by former President Robert Kocharian and another businessman, Samvel Karapetian, could win enough parliament seats to oust Pashinian. They said at the same time that the Armenian authorities will not “allow” such an outcome.
Tsarukian was indicted in December for selling his bottling plant in Bulgaria despite an Armenian court’s decision to freeze his assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In what his loyalists saw as a related development, law-enforcement officers raided his private compound outside Yerevan in February as part of another criminal investigation in which he had been questioned as a witness years ago. The former arm-wrestler seemed undaunted by the possibility of a new criminal case against him.