Prosperous Armenia party leader Gagik Tsarukyan charged with tax evasion

Armenian authorities on Tuesday filed charges of large-scale tax evasion against Gagik Tsarukyan, a tycoon and leader of the Prosperous Armenia party which finished fourth in Sunday’s parliamentary election.

According to unconfirmed media reports, Tsarukyan attempted to leave Armenia shortly before the charges were announced but was barred from doing so. No immediate details about a possible arrest were disclosed at the time of publication.

“Gagik Tsarukyan was going on a 2-3 day trip with his wife which was planned beforehand for personal matters,” the party’s spokesperson Iveta Tonoyan said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Prosperous Armenia finished behind Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, the Strong Armenia alliance led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, and former President Robert Kocharyan’s bloc. As of today, it remains several dozen votes short of passing the 4% threshold required for parliamentary representation, currently standing at 3.996%. The party has applied for recounts at multiple polling stations in hopes of crossing the threshold. However, Civil Contract has also requested recounts and today reported receiving hundreds of additional votes.

The outcome of the recount is crucial for the future composition of parliament. If Prosperous Armenia fails to pass the threshold, its five mandates will be redistributed among the three leading forces: Civil Contract would receive three additional seats, while Strong Armenia and Kocharyan’s bloc would gain one each. This would increase Civil Contract’s representation from 61 to 64 out of 105 seats, giving it more than 60% of parliament. Such a majority would allow the ruling party to independently appoint Constitutional Court judges and amend electoral legislation.

However, Civil Contract would still fall short of a two-thirds supermajority, meaning it would not be able to unilaterally amend key constitutional provisions or initiate a referendum on a new constitution. The latter issue is particularly significant, as Azerbaijan has stated it would only sign a normalization deal with Armenia if Yerevan removes a provision that Baku interprets as a territorial claim over Nagorno-Karabakh.