Kharjakyans Wouldn’t Be Kharjakyans Without Distorting Simple Facts: Karapetyan

Yerevan Mayor’s spokesperson Hakob Karapetyan responded on Facebook to the publication by David Kharjakyans, the leader of the “Luminous” faction.

“Kharjakyans wouldn’t be Kharjakyans if they didn’t try to distort simple facts and present a convenient picture of reality through that. The leader of the City Council’s ‘Luminous’ faction David Kharjakyans referred in his post to the fact that the mayor mainly drives the city’s official car, but until the beginning of this year, a driver was registered in the position,” he said.

Kharjakyans compares this circumstance with a known criminal case related to his driver’s name, attempting to equate the two situations. The question is that, according to media reports, the essence of the ‘Kharjakyans’ driver’s case is not about the workload of the ‘Luminous’ faction's driver Armen Mkrtchyan; rather, it concerns the fact that instead of Mkrtchyan, another individual, the driver of the head of the National Assembly’s “Bright Armenia” faction Edmon Marukyan, has been regularly receiving a salary from the Yerevan municipal budget.

Moreover, the materials of the case reveal that Marukyan's driver was the one who recommended Mkrtchyan to Kharjakyans, who immediately after starting work at the mayor’s office handed his salary card over to him, that is, the driver of the National Assembly’s “Bright Armenia” faction.

Thus, judging by media publications, law enforcement has been intrigued by how it is that the officially registered driver Mkrtchyan at the Yerevan mayor’s office has transferred his salary card to a driver registered at the National Assembly.

As for the driver who served the mayor’s official car until this February, we have a completely different picture here: Firstly, the mayor's driver attended work diligently until his dismissal and fulfilled his duties (and among the driver’s duties is not only driving the car but also maintaining it), and, most importantly, in contrast to the case described above, in this scenario, the community's funds were saved, not spent for the needs of third parties. Not to mention that significant savings are being made on the fuel expenses of the mayor’s car,” he further noted.