Who Is the MP That Transferred the Recording Involving Nikol Pashinyan to Serzh Sargsyan?

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, addressed a nearly two-year-old incident in the National Assembly yesterday concerning the release of a "scandalous" recording during his participation in the pre-election campaign for the snap parliamentary elections of 2021. According to armtimes, he mentioned: "Do you remember before the elections, Serzh Sargsyan released a recording involving me? By the way, no one has commented on who recorded it and how. Could it be that this person was a member of our faction in the past and is now part of another faction? They came, became an MP on our list, if I may say so, by essentially grabbing them by the ear and turning them into an MP, came to record the revolutionary team's meeting, took it and gave it to Serzh Sargsyan, and now they boast about it— it doesn’t even enter the ground," said the Prime Minister.

It is worth noting that the recording in question, which Serzh Sargsyan and his junior associates frequently reference, was made public during his pre-election campaign in Gegharkunik as part of the "Honorary Mission" alliance.

At the time of the release of the recording, the former MP of the "My Step" faction, Takhouhi Tovmasyan, who is now positioned in a prominent spot on the election list of "Honorary Mission," was present.

Recall that in the recording, which Sargsyan claimed was "handed to him by good people," Pashinyan recounts that when he traveled to Sochi on May 12, 2018, and had meetings, he was approached at a table meant for coffee where, before and after meetings, leaders like Putin, Nazarbayev, and Lukashenko told him: "You have such great popularity right now, etc., and this is your historical chance to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. I replied: 'Okay, I understand it's a historical chance, now tell me what it means to solve it.' And they began discussing what is written in the 'Lavrov Plan': withdrawing troops and so forth; we will come and stand, not a fly will buzz, etc., etc. I then said what I said now, that without clarifying the status, and very specifically, this is not a topic to discuss, etc. I even said I do not agree with this version, and now you are saying completely different things... And there, Putin, Nazarbayev, and Lukashenko all said that Aliyev understands that Nagorno-Karabakh will never again be part of Azerbaijan. I responded: 'You are saying a wonderful thing. Let’s write it on paper, and that will be a topic that I can then take to my people, saying 'Dear people, we have this offer; does this interest us or not?' No, but he says on the second nuance, he simply says, 'If I show this in any way, I will become a traitor to the nation.' I then said to them: 'So I understand, your acquaintance of a thousand years, you do not want him to become a traitor to the nation, you want me to become a traitor to the nation. I said, ‘It won’t happen, that will not happen.' And as a result of all this, I have stated numerous times that I realized they want to put me on the same conveyor, from where in the end, talking, smiling, drinking, there was the April War at the end. It was clear to me that my task was clearly formulated there, that in whatever way it may be, I need to jump off this conveyor, jump to another place, definitely not be on it,' he added, noting that the situation was very risky at the time.

The aim behind the release of the recording, as set forth by Sargsyan's PR team, was to "prove" that Nikol Pashinyan "sabotaged the negotiations." It should be noted that for the first time since the release of the recording, Pashinyan hinted at who could be the source of the leak without naming anyone specifically. From the Prime Minister's words, it can be inferred that he is referring to Takhouhi Tovmasyan herself.

In response to the Prime Minister's earlier statement, Tovmasyan decided to play ignorant, stating that she had "not listened to the Prime Minister's statement." Furthermore, she claimed that if the Prime Minister did not mention her name, it did not concern her. "Is my name given by Pashinyan? If my name was not mentioned, I cannot comment," said the former journalist turned MP from the revolutionary team.

By the way, Tovmasyan had previously denied any connection to the recording and to clear any suspicion against her, she stated that she had not participated in the meetings of the ‘My Step’ faction in the National Assembly for two years, thus she could not have been the source of the recording as she was not physically present in the faction meetings. Last October, Republican Party member Armen Ashotyans also stated that the recording took place "during a meeting of Nikol Pashinyan with the Artsakh delegation."

It is noteworthy that the former leader of the "Honorary Mission" faction, Arthur Vanetsyan, when he was the director of the NSS, had an infamous recording released that was well-known to the public. This was a genuine scandal since the NSS director, who is responsible for ensuring the informational security of Armenian citizens, was wiretapped. Moreover, both he and the country’s leader Nikol Pashinyan and then director of the Special Investigation Service Sasun Khachatryan were also targets of wiretappers. Vanetsyan, who reportedly had a close understanding with the opposition's Takhouhi Tovmasyan, stated that "the contractor is a very well-known person," but the public never learned his name.