Samsonyan Appeals to Head of Anti-Corruption Committee Demanding Criminal Prosecution of Pashinyan

The president of the Civic Consciousness NGO, Narek Samsonyan, made a post on his Facebook page, announcing his demand for the initiation of criminal proceedings against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Below is the full text of the post:

“I have submitted a letter to the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia and the Head of the Anti-Corruption Committee with a legal demand to initiate criminal prosecution against Nikol Pashinyan. I inform you that if my legal demand is rejected, I am prepared to exhaust all domestic avenues, and after the end of the usurpation of power, I will necessarily reopen this case or combine it with the numerous other more serious criminal cases against Pashinyan. Self-justice and lawlessness must be condemned with the utmost severity of the law.

Below, I am attaching copies of my submitted requests and texts:

To the Head of the Anti-Corruption Committee of Armenia, Sasun Khachatryan

To the Prosecutor General of Armenia, Artur Davtyan

Report of Crime

On November 2, 2019, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan showed through a Facebook live broadcast the state residence where he recently moved in with his family, stating that it is indeed the residence where former President Serzh Sargsyan lived.

The matter is that the law adopted in 2014 on 'Providing for the Activities, Services, and Social Guarantees of Officials' clearly defines the living and service conditions designated for both the President and the Prime Minister of Armenia. According to Article 7.6 of the law, the service conditions for the Prime Minister are as follows: ‘The Prime Minister is provided with a service residence in Yerevan with corresponding services, located at 74 Dzorapi, Building 3.’

From the aforementioned facts, we can conclude that according to the legal provisions, the service residence assigned to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is Building 3, which is accounted for by the Kanaker-Zeytun Community, and not Building 6, where Nikol Pashinyan currently resides. Moreover, during this period, no legislative changes have been made regarding the provision of another government residence for the Prime Minister.

This means that Nikol Pashinyan, in violation of the law, has moved into the residence that is not legally designated for him. As a result, not only are the regulations set out in the Law on the 'Provision of Activities, Services, and Social Guarantees for Officials' being violated, but also in the context of several actions/inactions by certain officials of the Kanaker-Zeytun Community, public funds are being squandered, and the functioning of this state non-commercial organization is being disrupted.

Considering that the aforementioned act evidently contains the characteristics of crimes specified in the second part of Article 179, Article 308, Article 309, and Article 332 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, I request that a criminal case be initiated regarding this fact, and that criminal prosecution be carried out against the officials who allowed these actions/inactions, as well as against those who assisted them, and that the normal functioning of the Kanaker-Zeytun Community be restored.

President of Civic Consciousness NGO, Narek Samsonyan.”