PM Pashinyan Gov. Faces Liabilities Because of Corruption, Fraud, Racketeering Perpetrated Against Investors Under Former Presidents Kocharyan and Sargsyan Regimes

BY APPO JABARIAN

According to Hetq.am, The Armenian government will pay US$280,000 to international law firm Steptoe & Johnson to represent its interests in an investment arbitrage suit dating to 2012. Edmond Khudyan, a U.S. real estate investor, had filed a case against Armenia at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes claiming that he was swindled during Kocharyan-Sargsyan kleptocracy regime years by his local business partner in a Yerevan real estate deal and that Armenia’s corrupted officials and courts did nothing to investigate and correct the alleged fraud.
In November 2021, the tribunal dismissed Khudyan’s $10.7 million claim against Armenia.
Khudyan, who owns Arin Capital Investment LLC, is now looking to partially annul the tribunal’s decision. In October 2012, Khudyan, a United States citizen, wrote to then U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Heffern asking for the embassy’s assistance in the case. Khudyan maintains that he was swindled out of $8.5 million by his local business partners. Khudyan, at the time, accused Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and State Revenue Committee of complicity in the case.
This writer joins many Diaspora and Homeland Armenians calling upon the current Pashinyan government to remedy the situation which has reportedly nearly driven Mr. Khudyan to bankruptcy.
Will the Rule of Law be gradually gaining momentum? Will the Pashinyan government consider proceeding to fully implement the ruling Civil Contract Party’s campaign promise to expeditiously execute the new law on ‘Confiscation of Illegally Acquired Assets?’
In early May, the U.S. Federal authorities moved to seize the $63-million-dollar Los Angeles mansion in corruption scandal involving one of former Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan’s corrupted cronies Gagik Khachatryan. The U.S. government alleges the mansion was bought with bribe money paid to Khachatryan.
US authorities asserted that the 33,652-square-foot (3,126-square-metre) property in Holmby Hills was purchased “with bribes paid by an Armenian businessman” to Armenia’s former finance minister Gagik Khachatryan in 2011. Former Pres. Sargsyan was president of Armenia from 2008 through 2018.
Many Armenians are grateful to the U.S. government for lending a helping hand to Armenia in properly identifying and assisting in confiscating and recovering not only Khachatryan’s illegally acquired assets but many other plutocrats.
Now, there is reliable information on the distinct possibility that the U.S. government will deepen its investigation and subsequent confiscation of former kleptocrats’ illegally acquired assets that are under U.S. jurisdiction.
Many Armenians in Armenia, Artsakh and Diaspora are now calling on other foreign states such as the Russian Federation, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, Austria and others to assist Armenia in properly identifying, confiscating from former and current Armenian officials; and repatriating the illegally acquired assets that reportedly are now under their jurisdiction.
Former Kleptocratic regimes of Pres. Levon Ter-Petrosyan (1991-1998), Pres. Robert Kocharyan (1998-2008), and Pres. Serzh Sargsyan (2008-2018), along with their relatives and cronies are suspected for having plundered the defense budgets of Armenia and Artsakh; and reportedly defrauded countless Homeland and Diaspora investors out of tens of billions of dollars.
In order to increase the momentum on international investments in Armenia and Artsakh, official Yerevan should set up a special fund to make restitution to all the victims of fraud, bullying, misappropriation, racketeering, infringement and extortion. Since its independence, Armenia has lost over 1.5 million of its productive citizens because of systematic impoverishment resulting from widespread in-grown Soviet-era corruption and nepotism.
The recent efforts to confiscate the illegally acquired assets can become the start of a new era in the twin republics of Armenia and Artsakh. Such punitive and corrective actions by the Armenian authorities can fuel an unprecedented boom in foreign investments, effectively lifting the population out of poverty; filling the state coffers to implement strong defense and healthy fiscal spending. Armenia desperately needs to secure social justice.
It is no secret that some forces inside and outside Armenia are constantly targeting Armenia-Artsakh’s economy in order to perpetuate massive poverty, economic servitude, modern-day feudalism and exodus; to weaken the Armenian citizens’ self-determination and self-defense capabilities; to ultimately undermine Armenia’s Sovereignty, Independence and Defence.
Many national security experts agree that the economic demise is the number one national security threat for any nation. In Armenia’s case that threat is even more accentuated because for the time being, Armenia is located in an adverse geopolitical situation. Robust economic and military buildup can become a critical evening factor.
The Armenian nation (Diaspora, Armenia and Artsakh) must collectively weed out the parasites within the Armenian nation both at home and abroad in order to pave the way for the patriotic forces to empower an enhanced leadership in the Republic of Armenia and to assist carrying out sustainable reconstruction of the Armenian statehood.
It’s high time that all the patriotic forces within the camp of the ruling party of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the camp of the former kleptocracy join other patriotic forces. This is an imperative whether the globalists (Sorosites) and the four former kleptomaniacs like it or not. A third force should emerge to the forefront of the Armenian nation and that force should consist of all the patriotic Armenians in Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora.
In the opinion of this writer, the pan ultimate goal of the Armenian nation shall be the convergence of all the patriotic forces so that the Armenian nation can effectively empower the twin Armenian republics to exercise their rights to Sovereignty, Independence and Defense. Those rights are the birthrights of the Armenian nation. They are not negotiable and inalienable.
This writer joins numerous activists in Armenia and Diaspora in appealing the current ruling party to facilitate the patriotic forces’ entry into the Armenian parliament by way of stripping the non-productive and/or counterproductive parliamentarians of their undeserved mandates and legislate a new law to legally transfer the recalled mandates to the highest vote getters in last year’s special election. Many of the patriotic parties were left out of the Armenian parliament in the aftermath of the 2021 June special parliamentary election because they couldn’t surpass the threshold of minimum 5%. That was hijacked by the old regime kleptocrats.
The former kleptocrat presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan spend OPM-Other People’s Money – millions of dollars from the ‘proceeds’ of illegally acquired assets. Reportedly they lavished hefty vote-buying bribes onto a vulnerable segment of the impoverished population.
To begin with, the results of last year’s parliamentary elections should be revoked or annulled because of widespread bribes. But for some unknown reasons, the Armenian authorities failed to do so, perhaps to avert further political destabilization of Armenia.
Many activists strongly feel that the current Armenian government must continue its comprehensive detoxification of Armenia’s criminal justice system and the justice system in general, by firing all the corrupted judges and prosecutors that were appointed by the former corrupt regimes of Ter-Petrosyan, Kocharyan and Sargsyan. By cleansing the Justice system Armenia’s economic, social, political and military growth may accelerate exponentially.
Many Armenian observers and legal experts believe that once the consolidation of the Rule of Law in Armenia is institutionalized, then it would be realistic to expect Yerevan and Stepanakert ushering in a new era of a healthier statehood coupled with facilitation of a top-of-the-line education system; augment the industrialization of the twin Armenia republics.