The following article appeared in the June 7 edition of the OCCRP website.

Two men convicted of serious crimes—one of attempted murder, the other of soliciting a murder—are free because the Czech Republic and Armenia can’t agree to swap the criminals in the interests of justice.

It is unclear whether a simple bureaucratic tangle is to blame or if the two countries are thwarting each other on purpose, but the end result is that justice is not being served.

Organized crime and political skullduggery are part of both stories – along with an astonishingly inept assassin-for-hire who twice missed his mark, seriously injuring one innocent victim and killing a second while his actual target remained unscathed.

The two men’s alleged crimes are unrelated and occurred a decade ago in different countries. The accused—Andranik Soghoyan and Robert Yeritsyan—are both Armenian citizens but have little else in common. Yet, by a twist of fate, one may owe his liberty to the other.

‘Vor v zakone’ not a great judge of talent

The more spectacular of the two crimes involves the violent underworld of the Russian mob. Soghoyan’s nickname is “Zap” or “Zaporozhets” – allegedly due to his resemblance to the legendarily sturdy Russian car. According to various testimonies in Prague court cases, he was crowned “vor v zakone”- a “thief in law,” or the boss of a post-Soviet organized crime group - in Moscow in 1994.

By the end of October 2007, Soghoyan was running a gang in Prague - and he was unhappy.  One of his mobsters had violated the thieves’ code, refusing to pay $500,000 into the “obšak,” a kitty to which members of a criminal group more-or-less voluntarily contribute. The code requires 50 percent of all criminal proceeds to be “donated,” with the collected sums used for such things as supporting members’ families when they are jailed or killed.

Refusing to contribute was simply not acceptable. Soghoyan and four of his henchmen plotted first to extort and, later, to kill the rebellious mobster.

Two weeks later, on Nov. 13 in Prague’s busy Wenceslas Square, two armed men approached a luxury Mercedes S-320, while a third stayed behind in a more modest SEAT Leon hatchback. According to court testimony, their aim was to warn the rebelling thug to “respect the instructions of [Soghoyan’s right-hand man] Gilani Alijev and do not beat his people, otherwise Gilani Alijev [would] take different measures next time.”

But the man driving the Mercedes did not react as expected. He seemed not to know what was going on. To bolster the show of force, the third assailant got out of the Leon and joined his comrades. They pulled the Mercedes driver out and stabbed him in the belly. Witnesses described a grisly scene, with the man shouting in a foreign language as blood spurted and tiny down feathers spun crazily from his winter coat.

He was the wrong man. The intended target had lent his Mercedes to a friend.

The victim survived the stabbing and later testified in court. But the message had been delivered, and the rebellious mobster contributed his missing half-million.

That wasn’t enough to save him, however.

Soghoyan resolved to try again and opted to use the same Ukrainian assassin, Timur Tretyakov, who had already stabbed the wrong Armenian in Wenceslas Square. Two weeks after that mistake, he was given a ČZ 75 Luger handgun, 100,000 Czech crowns (about US$ 5,500) and told to kill a man driving a black Bentley Continental on U Kanalky Street in Prague’s quiet residential quarter, Vinohrady.

And again he hit the wrong victim.

This time he fatally shot an innocent bystander -- the driver of former lottery king Aleš Hušák – who had the bad luck to be driving a similar Bentley at the wrong time and place.

To verify the hit, Tretyakov approached the body, removed the ID from his pocket and found out he had killed the wrong man. He dropped the gun and fled. Later in court, he maintained his innocence, describing himself as just “God’s slave.” He received a life sentence, later reduced to 22 years.

For his role in soliciting the murder, Soghoyan was sentenced to 22 years, but the court later ruled the testimony wasn’t credible. Though the prosecutor appealed, Soghoyan fled to Armenia, where he was captured in October 2014. Although the Armenian Ministry of Justice sought to keep him in custody, he was released three months later, on Jan. 23, 2015. It is unclear why.

Armenian law prohibits the extradition of Armenian citizens to other countries, but Armenian courts could have upheld the Czech court’s sentence by imprisoning Soghoyan in Armenia. It is possible that this refusal influenced a later Czech decision regarding the second man in the equation: Yeritsyan.

Yeritsyan & Sons – An Empire Crumbles

A decade ago, the Yeritsyan family was one of the most influential in Armenia. Albert Yeritsyan had established a supermarket chain called Yeritsyan & Sons and operated a large butcher’s business, Atenk. In 2008 he was elected mayor of Arabkir, a commercial and industrial district in Yerevan with a population of about 117,000.

After his entry into politics, things quickly headed downhill - mostly thanks to his son Robert, who was alleged to have stabbed a supporter of Hovhannes Shahinyan, the incumbent mayor his father ran against, in a fight. But when police came to Albert’s campaign office to arrest Robert, he was nowhere to be found. Albert Yeritsyan denied that his son was involved, and it is unclear if a case was ever filed.

The following year, in the spring of 2009, Robert Yeritsyan found himself in far more serious trouble. He was charged with attempted murder.

Andranik Soghoyan, in black shirt, wears sunglasses and handcuffs during his Prague trial. (Czech Press Agency photo)

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