A Yerevan Court today sentenced former RA Road Police Chief Margar Ohanyan to 6 years imprisonment for large-scale embezzlement.  

Judge Mkhitar Papoyan stated that the prosecution had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ohanyan had pilfered, for personal gain, 574,420 litres of gasoline destined to be used by the police.

The former police chief, who had also been charged with abuse of official powers, claimed he was innocent till the end.

“Where are those 30,000 gasoline canisters? Where is the tangible proof? Show me just one,” exclaimed an irate Ohanyan at today’s trial.

Turning to the chief prosecutor, Ohanyan shouted out, “If you get three of my former employees to swear that I have killed someone but fail to uncover the victim, would you again charge me?”

Prosecutor Haroutyun Haroutunyan responded by saying that while they had not uncovered the individual canisters, they had uncovered ample evidence of the embezzlement, including the testimony of witnesses and other individuals charged in the case.

Ohanyan described all this as “fabricated and concocted”.

Here the testimony history of Yeghishe Yengibaryan, commander of the First Officer Battalion, is of particular note. In his testimony, Yengibaryan states that he had only heard rumors of a gasoline shortage and that nothing of the kind had surfaced in his own battalion.

This differs substantially from his pre-trial testimony which Yengibaryan wanted to be accepted by the court since, as he stated, “it was the truth”.

At the following trial session, Judge Papoyan read out the petition of Yengibaryan where the witness requests that his pre-trial testimony be accepted by the court since, as he wrote, my previous testimony had been a consequence of personal inhibitions.

Naturally, there were other witnesses who were not so inhibited and stood by their damning pre-trial testimony.

In contrast, the other three individuals charged in the case – Stepan Karakhanyan, Ara Levonyan and Samvel Makhmouryan – refused to testify.

Most likely they wanted to avoid answering any inconvenient questions.

However, during a pre-trial interrogation, Ara Levonyan stated that Margar Ohanyan had verbally instructed him to allocate small supplies of gasoline to the various battalions and to transfer the canisters to him.

Levonyan stated that Karakhanyan was present at this conversation. Karakhanyan later stated that Levonyan was lying.

In court, Margar Ohanyan argued that Karakhanyan had been pressured into saying such things.

As per the indictment, Ohanyan and the other three defendants had all instructed the traffic police to allocate smaller quantities of gasoline but to show more on the official records.

The prosecution had demanded that the court sentence Margar Ohanyan to 8 years imprisonment. Judge Papoyan sentenced the former police chief to six.

Photo: Gagik Shamshyan