As part of the same criminal case, the Investigative Committee also indicted four other former officials who had served during Sarkisian’s rule. They included former Finance Minister Gagik Khachatrian and Gayane Gasparian, a former rector of Yerevan’s Brusov State University. Gasparian was arrested as well.
The committee claimed that Ashotian abused his powers to privatize a 450 square-meter property belonging to the state-run university when he served as education minister from 2009-2016. It said the property located in downtown Yerevan was purchased by one of Khachatrian’s sons at a fraction of its market value.
Ruben Melikian, a lawyer representing Ashotian, dismissed the accusations as politically motivated. Senior members of Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) likewise claimed that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian keeps trying to bully his political opponents on the eve of the tightly contested elections.
The HHK is not running in the polls. But it has urged supporters to vote for other major opposition groups challenging Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. Ashotian, who is the HHK’s deputy chairman, has sent the same message to Armenians in recent weeks on social media and in interviews with journalists.
In separate criminal cases, law-enforcement authorities also arrested two other men who held senior government positions during Sarkisian’s 2008-2018 presidency. Former Transport Minister Gagik Beglarian and former State Property Management Committee chief Arman Sahakian are facing accusations of abuse of power and vote buying respectively.
A vocal critic of Pashinian, Ashotian was already arrested in June 2023 on corruption charges stemming from property acquisitions carried out by another state university. He has strongly denied them. The 51-year-old was moved to house arrest in September 2024 and set free a year later pending a verdict in his trial which is still going on.