My Step Alliance Member Not Planning to Refute Statements About Armen Gevorgyan

Member of the National Assembly from the 'My Step' alliance, Arusyak Julhakyan, is set to appeal the decision of the first instance court of Yerevan, which required the lawmaker to refute defamatory information she spread about former Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan and pay 1,400,000 AMD as compensation. This was stated by Julhakyan in an interview with NEWS.am.

“I will appeal to the Court of Appeal, as I disagree with the content of the ruling. I continue to reference Pavel Anderson, the former head of one of the companies involved in the construction at Buzand Street, who gave a rather extensive interview to the 'Hetq' publication in 2012 and detailed all the names of the officials involved in that construction process with him. He also mentioned the amount of money and who received a bribe for obtaining the right to construct on Buzand Street,” Julhakyan said, asserting that these statements should be investigated and given a legal assessment.

The lawmaker finds the court's stance incomprehensible because, according to her, the Civil Code clearly states that when referring to a specific source, a person cannot be held liable. “One issue is that the veracity of these circumstances needs to be verified, and that verification is being conducted now; the investigative bodies are dealing with it, and Mr. Gevorgyan is well aware of these processes. But another issue is this civil process, which I consider baseless since I referred to a specific person and did not make anything up,” Julhakyan noted.

It is worth mentioning that the court, presided over by Arthur Stepanyan, partially granted Armen Gevorgyan's claim against Arusyak Julhakyan and Mushegh Shushanyan on April 6, ordering them to refute the defamatory information, publicly apologize, and pay compensation, while also recording a violation of the presumption of innocence, as per the demands for a public apology and compensation.