Representatives of Arthur Vanetsyan Issue Statement

The former director of the NSS, Arthur Vanetsyan's representatives have issued a statement, in which they state: “As it is known, we had requested ‘Dareskizb’ LLC (Armenian Time, armtimes.com) to refute the false, defamatory information about Arthur Vanetsyan published in the article titled ‘Do I have honor or not...’ on January 12 on the mentioned website. The application and the content of the refutation were disclosed by us, and the public had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with which specific expressions constitute defamation and which need to be completely refuted.

However, today, we received a letter from the said company, presumably addressed to us, indicating that ‘the application for refutation and the attached refutation text are not subject to discussion by the company.’ In the same letter, however, while making both the application and the refutation text the subject of discussion, the author mentions:

1. According to the mandate granted by Mr. Vanetsyan, his representatives have the ‘right to submit a request for refutation’ but do not have the ‘authority to submit a refutation text of such content.’
2. The refutation text and the application do not specify which expressions in the published article have been defamatory or violated Arthur Vanetsyan's rights.

However, according to the mandates granted to us, we are authorized to both submit a ‘request for the publication of a refutation regarding the published material, including the submission of a refutation text,’ and ‘make statements, submit and receive documents, applications, complaints, reports, other materials, and sign all necessary documents.’

We believe this letter is entirely appropriate to the content of the article published on 01.12.2020, its additional commentary is an unnecessary waste of time, and time must be used effectively to prepare the civil lawsuit and present it to the court as quickly as possible.

Representatives of A. Vanetsyan: Lusine Sahakyan, Aramazd Kiviryans.”