34-year-old Yerevan Woman Embezzles Large Sums from Donations for Injured Soldiers

In a case involving substantial embezzlement of funds sent as assistance to injured soldiers during wartime, the Investigative Committee of Armenia has charged 34-year-old Araksyan Hovhannesyan from Yerevan.

During the investigation, it was revealed that Hovhannesyan, upon learning that Nina Ajemyan from Kusa, Chelyabinsk in the Russian Federation was organizing a fundraising campaign to provide financial assistance to soldiers injured due to aggressive actions from Azerbaijan, contacted her and offered to take the collected funds to personally distribute them to specific soldiers receiving medical care.

Hovhannesyan obtained Ajemyan’s consent and a mutual agreement was made whereby she would visit medical institutions to photograph the injured soldiers, send these images along with their personal details to Russia, and Ajemyan would organize a fundraising campaign on her Instagram page to raise money that would be sent to Hovhannesyan.

According to the agreement, Hovhannesyan was supposed to allocate specific amounts to specific soldiers and document these transactions on video.

Between November and December 2020, Hovhannesyan sent photos of several soldiers receiving medical assistance to Ajemyan, facilitating fundraising activities. The collected funds, amounting to 200,000 Russian rubles each, were then sent to Hovhannesyan for five soldiers.

However, the investigation indicates that Hovhannesyan failed to distribute the entire funds to the soldiers as she had pledged. Instead, upon receiving these funds, she converted 150,000 rubles into Armenian dram, receiving 982,500 AMD. She kept 150,000 AMD in one envelope while placing the remaining 50,000 rubles in another envelope, distributing these separately. During the moment of handing over the money, she falsely claimed that one envelope contained 50,000 rubles and the other 150,000 without disclosing the specifics of the currency, thus misleading Ajemyan and those who sent money to her.

In total, Hovhannesyan embezzled 3,998,000 AMD through these deceptive actions.

With sufficient evidence gathered, Hovhannesyan has been charged under Article 179, Part 3, Clause 1 of the Criminal Code of Armenia (embezzlement or misappropriation). A motion has been submitted to the court to apply pretrial detention as a measure.

The investigation is ongoing, and efforts are being made to identify other individuals who may have suffered from Hovhannesyan's actions. Citizens who may have been affected are encouraged to contact the Malatia-Sebastia investigative division or call (010) 39-39-33, (010) 38-02-35.