Former President Robert Kocharyan’s son detained for two months

By Siranush Adamyan

A Yerevan court early Wednesday morning ordered Sedrak Kocharyan, the elder son of former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, held in pretrial detention for two months as part of a corruption investigation involving his father and several other people. 

The court issued the decision several hours after midnight following a hearing that lasted about seven hours, fully granting investigators’ request for detention, defense lawyer Aleksandr Kochubayev told reporters outside the courthouse.

Kochubayev said Sedrak Kocharyan’s right to receive visitors had also been restricted, with exceptions for his wife and children.

Investigators argued that Kocharyan could obstruct the proceedings if released. The defense rejected that argument, saying the transactions under investigation date back roughly 20 to 25 years.

“It is illogical to obstruct, for example, a transaction carried out in 2004,” Kochubayev said.

According to the lawyer, investigators are examining transactions from 2004, 2006 and 2010 that the Anti-Corruption Committee alleges were conducted through criminal means. He said Sedrak Kocharyan is also accused of assisting public officials in abusing their authority, but declined to provide details, citing the confidentiality of the investigation.

Kochubayev described the case as an “extralegal prosecution” with a political context and said the statute of limitations had expired for some of the alleged acts. The defense plans to appeal the detention order.

Sedrak Kocharyan was arrested on Aug. 25 along with his father and four other people after authorities launched a series of searches targeting the Kocharyan family and businesses linked to them.

Robert Kocharyan was charged with abuse of authority, large-scale bribery and money laundering. The Anti-Corruption Committee said investigators had obtained evidence that, while in office, Kocharyan used his position and acted in coordination with people close to him to remove valuable properties from state ownership and acquire them at prices significantly below market value.

The committee also alleged that some of the assets were registered in the names of Kocharyan’s relatives in an effort to conceal their ownership.

Authorities searched several businesses owned or operated by members of the Kocharyan family, including retail premises, a fitness center, an entertainment complex and a car dealership. Robert Kocharyan was hospitalized later on Aug. 25 with high blood pressure.

Former President Serzh Sargsyan was also charged with abuse of authority in the same investigation and summoned for questioning. Former senior officials from Kocharyan’s administration were also named in the case.

The law-enforcement actions came a day after a heated exchange in parliament between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Robert Kocharyan’s younger son, Levon Kocharyan, an opposition lawmaker with the Armenia Alliance.

Levon Kocharyan accused Pashinyan of publicly directing law-enforcement agencies and courts to prosecute members of his family and seize their property. Pashinyan responded by questioning how the Kocharyan family had accumulated its wealth and said assets acquired at the public’s expense should be returned to the state.

The Kocharyan family has described the investigation as politically motivated and says law-enforcement agencies are acting on Pashinyan’s instructions.

Robert Kocharyan, who served as president from 1998 to 2008, was placed under a travel ban in June in a separate economic-crimes investigation, shortly after parliamentary elections in which he ran for prime minister as the leader of the Armenia Alliance. The bloc received 9.9% of the vote, but Kocharyan later gave up his parliamentary seat.

Kocharyan was succeeded as president by Sargsyan, who remained in office until 2018, when a protest movement led by Pashinyan forced him from power. Both former presidents have faced multiple criminal cases since then but have so far avoided conviction.