Liparit Drmeyan served as the Armenian government’s top lawyer representing it in international courts until effectively objecting in August last year to Pashinian’s decision seize Armenia’s national electric utility owned by jailed billionaire Samvel Karapetian.
Karapetian’s Tashir Group challenged the legality of the seizure at the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC) in July 2025. Shortly afterwards, the arbitration body ordered the government to refrain from confiscating the Electricity Networks of Armenia (ENA) utility from Tashir, changing ENA’s top management or revoking its parent company’s operating license pending a verdict in the case. The government and Armenia’s Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) ignored the injunction despite a letter from Drmeyan warning that the authorities in Yerevan have to comply with it.
“I am the government ... no one can have a position that contradicts my position,” Pashinian said at the time, commenting on that letter.
The government announced Drmeyan’s dismissal the next morning. The latter participated in the June 7 elections as a top candidate of the opposition Wings of Unity party led by former human rights ombudsman Arman Tatoyan. Like other opposition contenders, the party accused the authorities of rigging the vote officially won by Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
Drmeyan personally alleged serious fraud at a June 16 news conference in Yerevan. He afterwards decried the Constitutional Court’s decision to uphold the official election results.
Pashinian lashed out at the former official on Thursday, branding him as Karapetian’s “Trojan horse” inside his government who “wrote notes contradicting the prime minister’s instructions.”
“Now I am calling on law enforcement, I am giving them a crime report it. Let them investigate the activities of the Trojan horse,” he told journalists.
He said law-enforcement authorities must specifically “check” Drmeyan’s bank accounts and other assets and find out how “a person serving the interests of a private company was in this building.”
Pashinian offered no proof of his allegations. Nor did he back up his claim that the Wings of Unity acted as a “tail” of the ruling party’s three main election challengers, including Karapetian’s Strong Armenia bloc. Tatoyan’s party never collaborated with the bloc during or after the elections.
The Office of the Prosecutor-General swiftly announced that it has begun acting on Pashinian’s comments.
Meanwhile, Drmeyan dismissed the allegations, saying that they “have no relation to reality” and result from his political activities. Pashinian “will have to refute them,” he said, hinting at legal action against the premier.
“Law and justice will prevail, and the public will see that ‘the government is not you,'” he wrote on Facebook.
Although Tatoyan and his party did not immediately react to the development, they will likely present it as further proof that the prosecutors are executing the prime minister’s illegal orders.