By Mark Dovich
Vahan Kerobyan’s tenure as Armenia’s economy minister came to an abrupt end in February, when he was dismissed, indicted on charges of abuse of power, and put under house arrest as part of a sprawling government probe into the alleged mishandling of a public tender at his agency.
Law enforcement claims Kerobyan and other officials ensured Synergy, one of Armenia’s leading tech companies, won a $1 million tender by illegally disqualifying another applicant. That procurement bid was later invalidated in court.
Aside from Kerobyan, the investigation initially ensnared four of his subordinates at the ministry, as well as Synergy CEO Ashot Hovanesian and two other company executives.
At the beginning of the month, prosecutors dropped charges against all suspects except Kerobyan and Hovanesian, who both proclaim their innocence. Days later, Kerobyan was freed from house arrest, though he remains criminally charged.
Kerobyan sat down on Monday with CivilNet’s Arshaluys Mghdesyan for an exclusive interview, giving his first public comments since his release.
Here are the highlights from that interview, translated into English.
Q: What was your first reaction to the charges?
A: The first reaction was extreme disappointment. The only motivation to go to work is to do good deeds, and therefore, to have the effect of those deeds later in your life in terms of your reputation. And when the work you do, which comes with a much lower salary than market value, is treated like this in the end, then the little thing you could have hoped for — to provide your children and family with good treatment from people — is destroyed in one swoop…But now I can say that in the past week, I have been communicating with people, and I see so much support that I could not even have expected when I was a minister.
Before my arrest, my colleagues and I discussed the situation, and some of them shared with me similar situations at their ministries, which could also be a basis for bringing charges against them. That, however, has not happened. This, of course, speaks to the lack of resilience in our country, that is, if it is so easy to influence the government, then there is no resilience.
Restrictions are decided by the court. In my case, house arrest meant that I could not communicate with anyone except my immediate family…Any kind of medical assistance was forbidden. And in the end, we barely managed to get some appointments with doctors.
Q: What is your view on law enforcement’s handling of the case?
A: I have been able to analyze and see the philosophy of the law enforcement agencies. And it is sad for me to say that real substance is not at all the priority, that is, efforts to understand what really happened. The main motivation is to advance the preconceived hypothesis at any cost, and the investigative authorities are not working to reveal the truth.
I am known as the most intolerant of corruption. During my tenure, I never allowed for a positive attitude of corruption to be formed in our ministry. I said about four months ago that the fight against corruption must not turn into a witch hunt.
Q: How do you look back on your time in office?
A: Ministers change very quickly, but their plans are long-term, that is, if you want to affect serious change in the country, it can take three to ten years…For example, in the last three months, some things happened that I had started at the very beginning when I became minister. The main motivation for staying in office was ultimately to achieve those results.
The main problem was that I saw that it was possible to do far more than what was actually being done. I considered that a waste of resources…It pains me that the government implements only ten percent of the programs it considers.
Q: How do you evaluate Armenia’s economy now?
A: At the end of 2023, when the prime minister came to review the Economy Ministry’s annual report, we identified five risks that could hinder our economic growth in the coming years.
They are: mechanisms for solving the issues facing people displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh; the decline in the mining industry; the decline of the IT industry; implementing investment programs; and governance and management.
Now I see that all five of these issues are materializing. In my opinion, we have poorly managed the problems facing people displaced from Nagorno Karabakh, because both the emigration rate is high and the employment rate is still very low. We had come up with solutions to those issues, and if the government had implemented them, we would have reaped the economic benefits. But that did not happen.
Translation by Zara Poghosyan
