«I Made a Basic Mistake»: Alen Simonyan on Administrative Sanctions Against Him

“I made a basic mistake. I registered the vehicle that was in my possession at that very moment, but the declaration referred to the entire year, meaning I should have registered it by January 1,” said Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan in an interview with NEWS.am on June 11, commenting on the decision of the Ethics Commission for High-Ranking Officials made on June 7.

He assured that he had sought to be maximally honest: “With the same logic, perhaps one can find such a mistake among every tenth of the 132 deputies, as the law also allows for errors since time is given to make corrections. It is one thing to talk about a mistake, a warning, inadvertently writing different information, and quite another to talk about fundamentally illegal enrichment, conversing with an investigator, and addressing the Anti-Corruption Committee.”

Simonyan indicated that the Ethics Commission proved what he had initially stated: “The fact that they have been saying from day one that they would turn to the Anti-Corruption Committee and have not done so speaks to the fact that they also understand there is no basis for such an appeal, but they raise a lot of noise.”

He explained the mistake by stating that as a high-ranking official, it was his first time filling out a declaration: “This has been my very first declaration as a high-ranking official. The tales that have been circulating until now about illegal enrichment, significant changes in financial status, or appeals to the Anti-Corruption Committee have evaporated into thin air.”

When asked about his past relationship with the coordinator of the “Together with Informed Citizens” NGO, Daniel Ioannisian, Simonyan mentioned that he became very angry with him once: “Immediately after the elections, Daniel personally visited at least one news site and convinced them to publish compromising material against me. Five days after that material was published, I unexpectedly met him somewhere and told him it was shameful that he had taken such a step. He publicly put that material out and asked me to comment on it. In our conversation, he admitted that he had taken such a step.”

Regarding why Ioannisian took such action, Alen Simonyan found it hard to give a clear answer: “I assume that the reason could be personal, or it could have to do with my positions at the Armenian-Russian level. I lead the Armenian-Russian Interparliamentary Committee; anything could be a reason.”

It is worth recalling that Daniel Ioannisian had claimed that the data regarding property, particularly the vehicle, presented in the declarations by Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan to the Ethics Commission for High-Ranking Officials and the Central Electoral Commission is false, and this was likely done to hide illegal enrichment.