Judge Davit Grigoryan Charged with Official Forgery

The Special Investigation Service of Armenia has announced that sufficient evidence has been gathered during the preliminary investigation of a criminal case against Davit Grigoryan, a judge of the Court of General Jurisdiction in Yerevan. The judge is accused of committing official forgeries with the assistance of Gor Vardanyan, a court secretary, in cases under his purview.

Specifically, on September 7, 2018, a complaint against the decisions of an investigator and a prosecutor was submitted to the Court of General Jurisdiction in Yerevan. Judge Davit Grigoryan was assigned to the case. He was obligated to begin the examination of the complaint within ten days of receiving it. However, in order to create an illusion that the examination of the complaint had started within the legal timeframe and to avoid potential legal interventions due to future shortcomings in his work, he prepared a forged record of a court hearing dated September 14, 2018, with the assistance of Gorian Vardanyan, despite no court session having taken place.

The forged record contained false information indicating that the complainant and representatives of the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor's office did not attend the hearing, while the court allegedly had no knowledge of their absence. Based on this falsehood, the hearing was postponed to another date. Accompanying the complaint were unregistered, unsigned, and formally unacceptable notifications claiming that the parties had been informed of the court hearing on September 14, 2018.

After composing the document containing the clearly false information and verifying it with their signatures, Grigoryan and Vardanyan submitted it to be included in the case materials. Additionally, on September 11, 2018, an application from the head of the Probation State Service of the Ministry of Justice of Armenia was received by the court. Judge Grigoryan was again assigned to this case the same day. To maintain an efficient assessment of his performance by showing a timely hearing of cases, he fabricated another record of a court hearing on September 14, 2018, with the same false claims regarding the absence of the parties.

In both cases for hearings dated September 14, 2018, the same time was recorded, yet Grigoryan and Vardanyan were not present in the Court of General Jurisdiction in Yerevan on that date and time.

For committing the aforementioned dangerous public acts, Judge Davit Grigoryan has been charged under the first part of Article 314 of the Criminal Code of Armenia for two counts, while Gorian Vardanyan has been charged under the first part of Article 38-314 for two counts as well. The preliminary investigation into the criminal case against Davit Grigoryan and Gorian Vardanyan has been completed. The case has been handed over to the supervising prosecutor with a request for approval and submission to the court.

Notice: An individual suspected of or charged with a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court decision in accordance with the procedures established by the Criminal Procedure Code of Armenia.