State Prosecutor’s Office goes to court to have lands sold to Golden Palace Hotel returned to Yerevan Municipality

Former Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan no longer faces charges of masterminding a real estate swindle in 2008 that allowed for a parcel of land registered as a municipal green zone to be sold to a private company.

Armenia’s Special Investigation Service (SIS) told Hetq that the statute of limitations in the case has expired.  Zakharyan served as Yerevan mayor from 2003 to 2009.

Zakharyan, and then Director of Yerevan’s Department of Architecture and Urban Development, Arsen Lalayants, issued a decision in 2008 that removed 10,000 square meters of land from the Armenian capital’s Haghtanak (Victory) Park.

At the time, the change was made under the pretext of drafting a revised master plan for the park. The land was later sold to the Golden Palace Hotel LLC at a price of 16.5 drams per one square meter.

The SIS says it has filed a court motion to have the 2008 decision annulled and to return the lands in question to the Yerevan Municipality.

Over the years, numerous government officials, most notably former Armenian Prime Ministers Hovik Abrahamyan and Karen Karapetyan, built or purchased homes constructed on the land overlooking downtown Yerevan.

The SIS launched a criminal investigation of the matter in October 2018 based on the findings of a Hetq article (From Public Land to Posh Yerevan Neighborhood: Former Armenian Government Officials Take Up Residence) a month earlier.

Some thirty people were questioned during the preliminary investigation, but the SIS will not say which officials owning private houses were questioned.

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan raised the issue during a February 20 cabinet session, admitting that government officials had built illegal private houses, including on land adjacent to the Haghtanak Park.

“Illegal buildings were apparently built on illegally appropriated lands. Now, when we say they must be legalized, we see that the past legislation was drafted in such a way that the municipality has no alternative but to legalize them,” Pashinyan noted.

Also owning homes near Haghtanak Park are ex-mayor of Yerevan Mayor Gagik Beglaryan and his son; former SIS Chief Andranik Mirzoyan; former State Revenue Committee Chairman Vardan Harutyunyan; ex-MPs Mihran Poghosyan, Seyran Saroyan, Gagik Abrahamyan, Hovhannes Sofoyan, Vahan Harutyunyan and his brother; former National Assembly Presidents Armen Khachatryan and Tigran Torosyan; and Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Haykaz Baghmanyan.