The Office of the Prosecutor-General said on Friday that an Armenian court in has agreed to place the shares in the Yerevan-based Ararat Brandy-Wine-Vodka Factory under the government’s “management and maintenance” pending a verdict on prosecutors’ demand to confiscate Tsarukian’s assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The prosecutors had moved to seize them in 2023, invoking a controversial law that allows the nationalization of assets deemed to have been acquired illegally.
The court similarly allowed the government two weeks ago to take at least temporary control of Armenia’s main cement plant owned by Tsarukian. Pashinian pledged to nationalize the plant when he campaigned for the June 7 parliamentary elections in which Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) was one of the main opposition contenders. He has since repeatedly pledged to imprison and “dispossess” Tsarukian as well as the leaders of two other key opposition groups.
Tsarukian was arrested on charges of defrauding Iranian business partners strongly denied by him. Later in July, he was also charged with evading taxes paid by the brandy distillery.
His legal team has denounced the shutdowns of his companies as illegal and politically motivated. It did not immediately react to the distillery’s seizure.
Tsarukian did not comment on the crackdown in another statement from prison issued earlier on Friday. He instead expressed serious concern at a continuing deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations and its consequences for Armenia’s economy.
“I can see that Armenia faces a high probability of shocks,” said the tycoon who has long stood for close ties with Russia.
On Thursday, it emerged that a Russian-Belarusian business partner of Tsarukian, who owns minority stakes in his key companies, has accused the Armenian government of “unlawfully expropriating” his business interests and demanded that it “restore the status quo ante by, among other things, returning the management and control of the enterprises to their lawful shareholders and management bodies.” In a statement, the investor, Nikalai Vinitski, said he will take the government to international court “if the dispute cannot be resolved amicably through negotiations.”