Who Owns the Villas Attributed to Papikyan and Mirzoyan

Images of villas attributed to Defense Minister Suren Papikyan and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan circulated on social media on January 24. This was reported by CivilNet.

According to users, the villa depicted on the left is owned by Suren Papikyan, while the house on the right belongs to Ararat Mirzoyan.

After the publication spread, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, Aram Torosyan, denied any connection of Suren Papikyan to these villas.
"CivilNet's fact-checking team, CivilNetCheck, decided to acquire the cadastral files of these villas from the Cadastre Committee to verify their ownership. First, the media pinpointed the locations of the two villas. The villa attributed to Suren Papikyan and the accompanying land plot are located in Yerevan's Ajapnyak neighborhood at Nazarbekyan street 57/17 and 57/9.
According to the media, the cadastral documents revealed that the design work for this villa began in 2016. The owner of the villa, as per the documents, is Vache Petrosy Minasyan, a Canadian citizen originally from Lebanon. He acquired the property at these addresses in 2013. Minasyan's ownership rights were registered in 2016.

The media noted that the documents provided by the cadastre clarify that there has been no change in the ownership structure of this villa since at least 2016, and it still belongs to Vahe Petrosy Minasyan.

The villa attributed to Ararat Mirzoyan was also clarified by the media to be located at 63-65 Mush Street in the Kasakh community of Kotayk Province: "The cadastral documents for this address confirm that the villa belongs to Aram Ashoti Margaryan, a resident of Kajaran. His rights to this address were registered in October 2018. Construction work in the area started as early as 2015. This villa has not been put up for sale in recent years and, according to documents, continues to belong to Aram Margaryan."