36 kg of Gold Case: Arrest of a Judge's Protégé in Yerevan

On April 13, law enforcement officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Armenia apprehended and neutralized several suspects involved in the robbery of 36 kg of gold ingots and a large sum of money on the Yerevan-Eraskh highway in the Ararat administrative area. According to reports, a man with a suitcase, who was stopped by law enforcement on the Yerevan-Eraskh highway, is a protégé of judge Arshak Petrosyan of the Yerevan City Court.

ArmLur.am reported that the protégé, Aran, gave the judge a nicely packaged bag, mentioning that his wife would come to pick it up. As a result, law enforcement had operational information that a portion of the stolen items had been found in the judge's vehicle. It turns out that the protégé had given part of the stolen items to the judge, while he was transporting another part in a suitcase to another location, where he was caught and subsequently arrested.

It should be noted that the Investigative Committee of Armenia officially stated that on April 10, a chase was initiated on a "Porsche" vehicle against a "Hyundai Sonata" vehicle, during which, from 07:15 to 07:20, an artificial obstacle was created in front of the specified vehicle on the Main Street of the Parakar community in the Armavir province, forcing it to stop under the threat of using a weapon. After stopping the vehicle, the suspected perpetrators, wearing uniforms resembling those of the National Security Service (NSS) of Armenia and masked, exited the vehicle and presented themselves as NSS employees. They used violence with weapons against three individuals in the car, forcibly removed them under the pretext of searching for drugs and other prohibited items, placed them in handcuffs, then stole 36 kg of 999-purity gold ingots and bags containing 293,000,000 Russian rubles from the vehicle before using tear gas inside the car and fleeing in the "Porsche" vehicle.

Based on sufficient evidence, criminal proceedings have been initiated against a total of 12 individuals, with detention measures applied to 5 of them, alternative measures for 3, and a decision for the arrest of 4 individuals has been made, with law enforcement tasked to locate them and present them to the prosecuting authority.