Lawyer Aram Orbelyan, representing Armenia’s second president Robert Kocharyan, said that the case contains an entire box of materials that amount to nothing. He made the remarks while speaking to journalists outside the Anti-Corruption Court.
“It is a collection of fictional stories with arbitrary interpretations. The issue is not where the money came from or whether there were sufficient funds to make the purchase. The case contains assessments of government decisions based on unsubstantiated assumptions. According to the prosecution, certain government decisions did not comply with legal norms, but we are not shown why they failed to comply. At the end, it is simply added that the president approved the decisions out of personal interest,” Orbelyan said, Sputnik Armenia reported.
According to the lawyer, an examination of the 1995 Constitution shows that government decisions were signed by the prime minister and approved by the president. In other words, the president was officially obliged to sign those decisions.
On August 25, law enforcement officers conducted searches at the residences of Robert Kocharyan and his son Levon Kocharyan, a member of parliament from the opposition Hayastan faction. Reports subsequently emerged that Robert Kocharyan and his eldest son, Sedrak Kocharyan, had been detained.
Robert Kocharyan was charged with abuse of official powers, money laundering on an especially large scale and accepting a particularly large bribe. During the night of August 25–26, a court ordered Sedrak Kocharyan to be held in pretrial detention for two months. On August 27, the court also ordered Robert Kocharyan’s detention for two months.
