Armenia: Prosecutor General Goes to Court to Return Illegally Sold Forests in Tzaghkadzor and Adjacent Communities
Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has initiated litigation to return forested lands, illegally privatized over the years, in Tzaghkadzor and adjacent communities returned to their rightful municipal owners
Hetq wrote about the illegal privatization of forested land in a January 2019 article entitled Former Armenian Officials and Their Associates Privatize Fifty Hectares of Forested Lands.
A criminal investigation was launched soon afterwards but was subsequently dropped because the shady land transactions dated to 2008 and the statute of limitations had expired.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has already filed three lawsuits with Kotayk Provincial Court, seeking to have the land auctions annulled. Two of the three lawsuits have already been processed and the court has placed an injunction of the land. Currently, 19 of the 25 deals are being contested.
The defendants in the three cases are the following former and current officials, and persons affiliated with them: Deputy Secretary of the State Control Service Karen Margaryan; former HayAntar Director Martoun Margaryan; Ishkhan Vardanyan (brother of former MP Aghvan Vardanyan); businessman Samvel Mayrapetyan; Arsen Arzumanyan (son of the adviser to the former mayor of Hrazdan); Shamrik Gabrielyan (wife of former MP Harutyun Gharagyozyan); Roman Galustyan (confidant of former Kotayk governor Kovalenko Shahgaldyan) and others.
The Tzaghkadzor Municipality is also preparing to seek redress in the courts, and Mayor Arthur Harutyunyan told Hetq that his office is compiling evidence and will be enlisting legal counsel.
Also acquiring land in Tzaghkadzor were associates of former Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, the son of former Armenian Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan, and a relative of the boxer Artur Abrahamyan.
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