Unreported Properties of Gagik Beglaryan, Samvel Aleksanyan, Hrant Davtyan and Their Relatives in Dubai

Dubai, towering above the warm sands of the Arabian Peninsula, has become a noisy megacity over the past few decades, attracting not only ordinary tourists from various corners of the world but also wealthy individuals who come here to make significant investments. The real estate market is an excellent place for such investments. The massive influx of money is facilitated by Dubai's opaque jurisdiction, relaxed regulations from the authorities, and indifference towards the origins of investments, as noted by Hetq.am.

Dubai is a favorite destination for Armenian oligarchs, politicians, and various state officials. They sometimes organize weddings for their children there, celebrate birthdays, hold political consultations, strike business deals and settle arising disputes. Some of them spend New Year’s holidays in Dubai with their families, while their wives go for shopping.

New data that has come to light shows the scale and luxury of real estate owned by some Armenian officials and businessmen in Dubai. Some of these individuals are involved in various criminal cases in Armenia.

The number of Armenians owning property in Dubai is quite large, but not all of them are known to the public. This time, we have chosen four former high-ranking officials who have failed to declare their estates in Dubai, despite being legally obliged to do so.

Gagik Beglaryan has purchased an apartment on the famous Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. His political career flourished from the early 1990s until 2016. He served as a member of the Armenian Parliament at various times from 1993 to 1995 and in 2012, was the head of the Central district community of Yerevan from 2002 to 2009, the Mayor of Yerevan from 2009 to 2010, and held the position of Minister of Transport and Communications from 2012 to 2016. However, currently, Beglaryan’s affairs in Armenia are quite troubling. The Armenian law enforcement has initiated two major cases against him.

One of these cases is a criminal proceeding being investigated by the National Security Service (NSS). In November 2022, the Prosecutor General announced that Beglaryan, a former head of the Central district community of Yerevan and a former Mayor of Yerevan, had abused his official position to illegally seize especially large amounts of real estate in Yerevan and other locations.

The Prosecutor’s Office released a list of 24 properties located in Yerevan. According to the law enforcement agencies, Beglaryan used his official position along with the help of several individuals to conceal the origin of criminally acquired assets and to legalize them through various formal transactions for most of the stolen properties. Reports from the Prosecutor’s Office state that several preschool buildings have also been illegally seized, which halted their operations, violating the rights of dozens of children attending these facilities.

In November 2022, criminal prosecution against Beglaryan was initiated on 27 cases involving various charges.

The other case concerning the former official is a civil lawsuit currently being heard in the Anti-Corruption Court, in which the Prosecutor General seeks to reclaim significant assets belonging to G. Beglaryan, his wife, son, and daughter, which are allegedly of illegal origin.

This property includes 33 apartments, plots, buildings, and parking lots located in Yerevan, of which 11 are on Northern Avenue, 7 on Khorenatsi Street, 3 on Arshakuniats Avenue, 2 villas on Azatutyan Avenue, 2 plots on Tamanian Street, and 2 on Teryan Street. The remaining real estate is located in various administrative districts of Yerevan, in the town of Tsaghkadzor in Kotayk Province, and in the Sis community of Ararat Province. The Prosecutor's Office also seeks to confiscate a “Mercedes-Benz S600L” vehicle.

If it is impossible to confiscate the specified property, the Prosecutor's Office intends to recover its average market value, amounting to approximately 11 billion drams, as well as rights to participate in 10 legal entities worth nearly 2 billion drams, which are parts of unreturned loans transferred to the victims. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, an additional 4.5 billion drams should be reclaimed, derived from income obtained from the use of illegally acquired properties, and the leftover funds from the sale of such properties, as well as amounts unjustified by the person's lawful income transferred to conscientious third parties.

To reclaim this property, the Prosecutor General’s Office filed a suit in May 2022. Initially, the case was handled by the Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan, but it was later transferred to the newly established Anti-Corruption Court. Beglaryan did not declare his apartment in Dubai, and the Prosecutor's Office has not included it in the property subject to confiscation.

As we can see, the properties submitted by the Prosecutor's Office for confiscation are located only in Armenia, but Hetq has discovered that Gagik Beglaryan also owns property in Dubai. According to the data available to us, he acquired that property between 2008 and 2018. However, it remains difficult to ascertain the exact date of purchase. The former official's property is located in the upper section of the famous man-made Palm Jumeirah at the “Balqis Residence” complex. Beglaryan’s apartment is on the 7th floor of this complex, totaling 243 square meters, featuring 3 bedrooms and a 42-square-meter balcony.

Hrant Davtyan is one of the Armenians who acquired property in Dubai relatively early. It should be noted that he served as a member of the Armenian Parliament from 2012 to 2017 and again from 2018 to 2019. We previously reported on Davtyan’s Arab properties in the fall of 2018. However, we initially focused on just one apartment belonging to the still-serving Davtyan, as we did not have details on the others.

After inquiries from Hetq, Davtyan declared one of his apartments. Based on the data available to us, we wrote that H. Davtyan owns an apartment in Dubai Marina (also known as Marsa Dubai), a rapidly developing and modern high-rise district in the city. His house is located in the first of the two Al Sahab towers. In 2018, we noted that Davtyan purchased the 7th floor of the 24-story “Al Sahab1” tower, while his colleague and former MP Hakob Hakobyan (Choyt) resided in the 6th floor of the 44-story “Al Sahab 2”. Hakobyan had informed us at the time that he sold his apartment to meet tax obligations. However, Davtyan's situation was more intriguing.

Davtyan purchased property in “Al Sahab” between 1997 and 2007, but after becoming a member of the Parliament in 2012, he did not declare this Arab property, which he was obligated to do. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, hiding declarable information was not considered a crime until July 2017, providing a good opportunity for many Armenian officials who have not been diligent in fulfilling their obligations.

We have learned from the Corruption Prevention Commission that Davtyan did not declare his property in “Al Sahab” until 2018, an issue inadvertently raised after inquiries from a Hetq journalist. After the parliamentary term from 2012 to 2017, Davtyan ran for the 2017 elections, submitting a property and income declaration to the Central Electoral Commission in February 2017, in which he listed only 5 units of real estate in Armenia. Regardless, he was re-elected not in 2017 but in the summer of 2018 when a party mate renounced his mandate. It was after that that the Hetq journalist asked him several questions about his property in Dubai. Davtyan admitted that to the best of his recollection, they own an apartment measuring 86 square meters, registered under the name of one of his family members, which is why it hadn’t been declared previously. He noted that they acquired it about 15 years ago when they established a tourism business in Dubai. “It was cheaper than hotels at the time, that’s why I bought it,” Davtyan stated.

Following this conversation, in September 2018, Davtyan submitted a declaration of his appointment to the Central Electoral Commission, in which he finally disclosed the Arab apartment years after the purchase. The commission recently informed us that the 2018 declaration is a jointly owned property.

Wealthy businessman Samvel Aleksanyan was a member of Parliament from 2003 to 2019. He and his wife, Shogherina Mkrtchyan, purchased an apartment in the aforementioned “Trident Grand Residence” between 2012 and 2014. The couple are immediate neighbors of Hrant Davtyan. The property belonging to Aleksanyan and Mkrtchyan spans 202 square meters, features 3 bedrooms, and has a balcony (34 square meters), and they also have two parking spots. The apartment is rented out. According to Dubai's cadastre, the annual rental price for a 3-bedroom apartment in Dubai Marina can range from 147,000 to 179,000 dirhams (approximately $40,000 to $49,000). As for selling prices, one can buy a 3-bedroom apartment with around 200 square meters in “Trident Grand Residence” starting from 4.2 million dirhams (approximately $1.1 million).

According to the Corruption Prevention Commission, neither Samvel Aleksanyan nor his wife have ever declared their property in Dubai. This will, in fact, lead to legal issues for them, as they had already owned that apartment by at least 2014, but they did not declare the property until January 2019 when Aleksanyan resigned from his mandate.

For more details, continue reading on the original source website.