By Lucy Papachristou
July 16 (Reuters) - Armenia has seized control of a cement company owned by an arrested opposition leader, state media said on Thursday, as critics accuse Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of waging a crackdown on opponents since winning re-election last month.
Gagik Tsarukyan, a billionaire businessman and former world arm wrestling champion, was arrested on July 6 on suspicion of fraudulently importing $21 million worth of goods from Iran.
The 69-year-old leader of the pro-Russian Prosperous Armenia party has been placed in detention for two months while awaiting trial on the charges, which he rejects as politically motivated.
Pashinyan has drawn strong support from the European Union as he tries to steer Armenia closer to the West and away from Russia’s orbit. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, visiting Yerevan this month, praised the country for “carrying on the path of democracy, reform, peace, and of a closer partnership with Europe”.
But Tigran Grigoryan, director of the Regional Centre for Democracy and Security think-tank in Yerevan, said the action against Tsarukyan was a clear case of the law “being instrumentalised for the narrow political purposes of the ruling party”.
“There is a huge danger and risk that more and more people who have nothing to do with the previous government or Russia will become victims of this process,” Grigoryan said in a telephone interview.
PASHINYAN VOWS TO FIGHT ‘SPY PARTY OF WAR’
During his election campaign, Pashinyan had suggested opposition forces were threatening to drag Armenia back into war with Azerbaijan, with which it had been in conflict intermittently for nearly four decades.
Since his victory, the prime minister has vowed to pursue criminal cases against members of a trio of opposition parties, including Tsarukyan’s, which he describes as “the three-headed spy party of war”.
These prosecutions will involve “confiscation of illicit assets” owned by leaders of these parties, Pashinyan said.
The asset seizure stemmed from a lawsuit filed against Tsarukyan and others in October 2023, which requested the seizure of the politician’s shares in the cement company on the alleged grounds that he had acquired them illegally.
On Thursday the Anti-Corruption Court granted a petition by the prosecutor general to transfer the shares to the Armenian government, state news agency Armenpress reported.
Tsarukyan built his fortune in gambling, mining and other sectors during the chaotic decade that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, of which Armenia was part.
The lawsuit also demands that he hand over three dozen real estate properties and 42 vehicles, relinquish his role in 38 companies, and pay 108 billion Armenian dram ($296 million).
($1 = 364.0000 dram)
(Reporting by Lucy PapachristouEditing by Mark Trevelyan and Gareth Jones)
