Tsarukian and eight other individuals are facing fraud accusations stemming from a financial dispute with two Iranian entrepreneurs. The latter set up two years ago a joint venture with Tsarukian’s Multi Group that never operated as planned. Armenia’s Investigative Committee has backed their allegations that the tycoon leading the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) misappropriated $22 million worth of fuel, transport equipment and other goods supplied by them from 2022-2024.
Tsarukian insisted that he himself was defrauded by them during the latest session of his trial on Wednesday.
“There is no evidence that I embezzled any money,” he said. “I on the contrary invested the entire amount myself.”
A lawyer representing his former business partners claimed the opposite, angering the BHK leader. Meanwhile, the trial prosecutors petitioned the presiding judge to allow them to hold him in detention for three more months. The judge agreed to the demand in a decision announced the next morning.
Tsarukian was arrested on July 6 following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s repeated pledges to jail and “dispossess” him and the top leaders of two other major opposition groups that challenged the ruling Civil Contract party in the disputed elections. The BHK joined those groups in rejecting the official election results as fraudulent.
Tsarukian’s party fell just short of clearing a 4 percent vote threshold for entering the Armenian parliament after the Central Election Commission cancelled vote results in three precincts and controversially refused to rerun the elections there. Election observers from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) have criticized the CEC’s decision that greatly benefited Pashinian’s party.
Tsarukian was demonstratively taken into custody just as investigators sealed off the offices of dozens of his companies. The Armenian authorities seized the largest of them, a brandy distillery and a cement plant, in the following weeks.
Later in July, Tsarukian was also charged with evading taxes that were due to be paid by the Yerevan-based Ararat Brandy-Wine-Vodka Factory. He denies these accusations as well.
The leaders of the two other opposition contenders, former President Robert Kocharian and billionaire Samvel Karapetian, were also arrested on separate charges rejected by them as politically motivated. Karapetian was remanded in pre-trial custody on Thursday.