By Mark Dovich
CivilNet, alongside Transparency International Armenia, scored a major legal victory this month, with a Yerevan court holding that Armenia’s mining oversight body must release documents requested under freedom of information laws.
A lower court had issued a similar decision last year, but the government appealed that court’s ruling.
In 2021, CivilNet investigative reporter Mkrtich Karapetyan submitted a freedom of information request to the Environmental Protection and Mining Inspection Agency, an independent government body, for documents showing compliance violations in Armenia’s metallic mines.
The agency twice refused to provide the requested information and, contrary to Armenian law, failed to explain its reasoning for the refusals. It instead pointed CivilNet to publicly available inspection reports that did not contain the full information requested. In response, CivilNet took the government to court.
Under Armenian law, the Environmental Protection and Mining Inspection Agency may again appeal the ruling, but it has so far not indicated publicly if it will do so.
CivilNet reporters regularly submit freedom of information requests to Armenian government bodies. Such requests are rarely denied outright, and even more rarely result in legal action. Armenian law allows anyone to request information from public bodies, which are expected to respond within one month.
CivilNet defeats defamation case after abuse of power investigation
In a separate development last week, a court in Vanadzor, Armenia’s third largest city, dismissed a libel suit brought against CivilNet by a hospital director in a nearby town, ruling that a CivilNet investigation into his apparent abuse of power “cannot be considered defamatory” and citing “overriding public interest” in the reporting.
Stepan Mosinyan, the director of the Alaverdi Medical Center, sued CivilNet for defamation last year after the outlet’s Lori region correspondent, Larisa Paremuzyan, published an investigation uncovering his alleged abuse of power.
Paremuzyan had reported that Mosinyan, whose relatives hold a substantial stake in the coffin business and parts of the funeral industry in the town of Alaverdi, was pressuring families of deceased patients to use his relatives’ services.
Mosinyan has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Under Armenian law, he may appeal the court’s ruling, but he has so far not indicated publicly if he will do so.
Read the investigation (in Armenian): Alaverdi Medical Center Director: Monopolist of the ‘Death’ Business
