Where Did Manvel Grigoryan Get 109 Immovable Properties? Details

A few days ago, it was revealed that Manvel Grigoryan has decided to transfer his 109 immovable properties to the court’s deposit account as compensation for the damage caused.

It remains unclear whether the court will change his means of restraint, but Grigoryan’s move prompts society to reflect again on the question of where he obtained 109 properties. Moreover, how is it that several participants in the Artsakh war managed to 'capitalize' on their combat past and accumulate great wealth, viewing Armenia as a strategic opportunity to take whatever they please?

After all, Grigoryan is not the only one acting this way. In a broader sense, Robert Kocharyan has also behaved similarly; he came to Armenia as a 'hero of the Artsakh war', leveraging that status to become president, quickly seizing whatever he liked, and even publicly expressing doubt that there were other men in Armenia besides him. His assets are undoubtedly more significant than those 109 immovable properties (he claims that his family's wealth in Armenia is equivalent to that of another 200 families), but instead of transferring that wealth to any court deposit account, his supporters are currently holding signature drives in various regions of Armenia and Artsakh in support of their 'boss'.

The issue is not even about what citizens are signing (if they are signing). The multimillionaire former president can certainly tap into his financial resources and even pay, say, one hundred dollars for each signature (a mere ten million dollars for a hundred thousand signatures), but the question arises: what does this have to do with justice?

In the past, he and Serzh Sargsyan used similar methods to 'score percentages' in elections and become presidents, but that did not elevate their legitimacy—even in their own eyes—among those who accepted the bribes or yielded to various pressures.

The problem is that legitimacy is essential not only for those in power but also for the opposition. While it is possible to maintain power and create the illusion of legitimacy by bribing (or intimidating) people, it is impossible to become a legitimate leader of the opposition or a 'people’s favorite' through the same methods. Even if people, driven by necessity, take the 'pizza', they will not consider the giver a legitimate opposition and will not follow them.

This raises the question: why do the former leaders spend resources to at least create the illusion of public support? The only explanation is that even that illusion is enough for them. In this case, it is theoretically possible to carry out a coup in the country with the support of external forces and show through paid 'allies' that it was the 'will of the people.'

In simple terms, before they were fabricating power, and now they are trying to fabricate opposition. More accurately, they were once false powers (because they did not receive the people’s votes), and now they are false opposition (because they lack the people’s support).

As a result, they are engaging in a fake struggle. Fake, because they present it as a political conflict while, in reality, they are merely fighting to evade responsibility for their actions. The 'mass mobilization' of supporters is merely a cover for this farce.