A Yerevan court today found Armen Charchyan, director of Yerevan’s Izmirlian Medical Center, guilty of voter coercion in the country’s 2021 snap parliamentary election.

Charchyan, a former Hayastan (Armenia) faction MP, was caught on tape threatening hospital staffers to vote or else face “much tougher treatment”.

Charchyan was one of the opposition Hayastan Alliance candidates running for a seat in the parliament. He and twenty-eight other alliance candidates made it to to the Armenian National in that election.

Charchyan, who resigned from parliament months ago, was given three years’ probation.

The director of the hospital, managed by the Mother See of the Armenian Apostolic Church, rejects the coercion charge, and will appeal the court’s decision.