Former Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan has been charged with illegally using his official powers to take control of a company engaged in sand mining in Armenia and receiving profits amounting to AMD 230.4 million (US$593,400).

Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), in a statement released today, says Abrahamyan used proxies to gain a 60% share of the company (Avazahatik) between 2006 and 2016.

The ACC claims Abrahamyan laundered the money by purchasing properties under the names of close associates.

During this period, Abrahamyan served as prime minister (April 2014-September 2016), National Assembly Speaker (May 2012-April 2014; September 2008-November 2011), and Minister of Territorial Administration 2005-2008).

In September 2018, the company’s director testified that in 2008, Abrahamyan (then President of the National Assembly) and other high-ranking officials impeded the company’s operation and demanded a 60% share of the stock, threatening that the mines would be closed otherwise.

In 2019, Armenia’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal case charging several former government officials with exploiting the power of their office to privatize more than fifty hectares of land, some of it state-owned forest, in Armenia’s Tzaghkadzor region.

In its announcement, the Investigative Committee (IC) wrote that it launched the case based on a Hetq expose entitled Former Armenian Officials and Their Associates Privatize Fifty Hectares of Forested Lands.

The article focuses on how the officials, including former Hrazdan Mayor Aram Danielyan,   former Kotayk Provincial Governor Kovalenko Shahgaldyan, and former Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, used their positions to obtain the land just one month after it had been put up for auction in 2007.