Prosecutor's Office Receives Criminal Case Against Serzh Sargsyan and Others

The Prosecutor's Office of Armenia received the criminal case against Serzh Sargsyan and others yesterday. This was reported by the head of the Public Relations Department of the Prosecutor's Office, Arevik Khachatryan, in response to a question from "Haykakan Zhamanak." On January 20, the Special Investigation Service announced that the preliminary investigation had been completed and the case had been sent to the supervising prosecutor with a motion for submission to the court.

According to the SIS report, sufficient evidence was gathered during the investigation, which revealed that, organized by Serzh Sargsyan and influenced by Barsik Beglaryan, the owner of "Flash" LLC, with the assistance of former Deputy Minister of Agriculture Samvel Galstyan and the head of the Plant Production Department of the same ministry, Gevorg Harutyunyan, the former Minister of Agriculture Sergo Karapetyan misused a particularly large amount of funds allocated as subsidies for the implementation of state support programs for the expenditure of 15,391,765 liters of diesel fuel from the Reserve Fund of the Government of Armenia, totaling 489,160,310 AMD, between January 25 and February 7, 2013.

In the initiated criminal case, Serzh Sargsyan is charged with organizing the embezzlement of an especially large amount, amounting to nearly half a billion AMD through misappropriation, while Barsik Beglaryan is charged with inciting to commit the misappropriation of the same amount. It later became clear that the former Minister of Agriculture Sergo Karapetyan is accused under part 3, point 1 of Article 38-179 of the RA Criminal Code (large-scale embezzlement or waste), while the Deputy Minister and the mentioned head of department are accused under part 3, point 1 of Article 38-179 (aiding large-scale embezzlement or waste).