Law-enforcement authorities also arrested Kocharian’s elder son Sedrak and the chief executives of four companies linked to his family on Tuesday the day after his second son Levon bitterly argued with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on the parliament floor.
Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) claims that Kocharian had abused his powers to acquire state-owned property at cutdown prices during his 1998-2008 rule. It also accuses him of money laundering and bribery. Sedrak Kocharian is accused of assisting in the alleged crimes.
The ex-president, who will turn 72 on August 31, felt unwell and was taken to hospital just a few hours after his arrest. He was brought to the courtroom on Wednesday night at the start of a hearing on his pretrial detention sought by the ACC.
The hearing continued even after Kocharian was again hospitalized. The court eventually allowed the investigators to hold him in jail for the next two months. He was transported to a prison in central Yerevan later in the day. According to Levon Kocharian, his father underwent cardiac stenting two weeks and has not yet recovered from the surgery.
The ex-president had already been incarcerated for three times since the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. He faced accusations stemming from a 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. He and three other former officials are still standing trial on those charges strongly denied by them.
Parliament deputies from Hayastan insisted on Thursday the latest criminal proceedings against their leader were also ordered by Pashinian.
“There is no independence of law enforcement agencies or courts in Armenia,” one of them, Artur Khachatrian, charged on the parliament floor. “There is only Nikol Pashinian's dictatorship.”
“This is not about Robert Kocharian personally,” he said. “All those who oppose the current course are being tried and will be tried under Nikol Pashinian.”
Meanwhile, Pashinian continued to accuse Kocharian of corruption, pointing to his and his sons’ business interests.
“No one asks the question: where did Robert Kocharian get those billions?” he told a news conference.
Hayastan was one of the three main opposition groups that challenged Pashinian in the June 7 parliamentary elections and accused him of rigging their results. Before and after the elections, Pashinian repeatedly pledged to jail and “dispossess” them. He claimed on Monday to have a popular mandate to fulfill that pledge.
Pashinian’s Civil Contract party won just under half of the vote, according to the official election results not recognized by the Armenian opposition.