Members of Parliament Gagik Tsarukyan and Levon Sargisyan, Head of the State Customs Department Armen Avetisyan, and Deputy Head of the State Police Department Armen Yeritsyan have all built houses in the recreation areas and forest reserves of Tsaghkadzor, as Hetq has reported.
On October 11, 2004 the Court of First Instance of the Kotayk Marz (province) sentenced Gagik Stepanyan to six months in prison for physically assaulting photojournalist Mkhitar Khachatryan of the news agency PhotoLur and reporter Anna Israelyan of the newspaper Aravot.
As we reported on August 28 th , a number of media outlets organized a joint protest in which ninety journalists went to Tsakhkadzor in nineteen cars. They drove around the town taking pictures of the forests that have been cut down and the houses of various government officials and businessmen that have gone up.
On August 24, 2003 , Armenian journalists were physically attacked once again. This time, in Tsakhkadzor, Gagik Stepanyan, a bodyguard of parliament member Levon Sargisyan, beat photojournalist Mkhitar Khachatryan of the news agency PhotoLur and reporter Anna Israelyan from the newspaper Aravot.