What Charges Will Be Brought Against Taron Margaryan?

The Prosecutor's Office is preparing to file charges against Taron Margaryan, a member of the National Assembly from the "Honorary Title" faction, for money laundering, abuse or exceeding of official powers, and unlawful seizure of land plots belonging to the state or community, as well as for failure to take measures prescribed by law to suspend the unauthorized construction of buildings or structures or to hold individuals accountable for such actions. This information is stated in the petition submitted by the General Prosecutor's Office to the National Assembly.

In this regard, Taron Margaryan's lawyer wrote, "A petition has been submitted to the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia regarding the consent of the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia to initiate criminal prosecution against Taron Andranik Margaryan. Several notes must be made regarding this matter.

The case in question was opened 7 years ago, in August 2018, and was investigated for three and a half years (until December 2021) with an unclear sluggishness in almost all investigative bodies known to us at that time. Within the framework of this case, Mr. Margaryan was charged in 2021 under Article 308, Part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia (abuse of official powers, which has caused severe consequences due to negligence). This criminal case was sent to court in 2022 and is still under investigation.

It should be noted that Mr. Margaryan has never acknowledged the charges against him. After that, in March 2025, the pre-trial body and the prosecutor's office had an ingenious idea that Mr. Margaryan, under the same factual data and circumstances, not only abused his official powers but also committed money laundering. It should be noted that the evidence available in this criminal case is completely and entirely the same as the evidence available in the criminal case being heard in court; no new evidence has been obtained in this matter from December 2021 to March 2025.

In this context, it is appropriate to remember the absolute prohibition under the Constitution and Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia against holding a person criminally liable for the same act again.

At the same time, a just question arises for any reasonable person: if the pre-trial body examined the criminal case from August 2018 to March 2025, for almost 7 years, and as of December 2021, the circumstances confirming Mr. Margaryan's commission of money laundering, which is considered a particularly serious crime, had been established with the collected evidence, then why did it not carry out actions directly stemming from its powers for three and a half years and only recalled this crime in March 2025? The same question is also relevant for the body that exercises supervision over the legality of the criminal case—the prosecutor's office.

The reason is perhaps much simpler: the statute of limitations for criminal liability has passed for the criminal case in question, and, as always, the pre-trial body and the prosecutor's office need to create yet another criminally motivated presentation to keep the public occupied, while they have not managed to concoct a more interesting scenario.

In any case, I believe it is again necessary to note that the criminal prosecution against Mr. Margaryan is purely political in nature and has no intersection points with the law. I will address the absurdity of the 'criminal acts' attributed to Mr. Margaryan in more detail in the near future."