On February 10, 2005 the Court of Cassation ruled in favor of Edik Baghdasaryan, president of the NGO Investigative Journalists of Armenia, in his suit against Mayor Yervand Zakharyan. In doing so, the court obliged the mayor to make available to the journalists' organization information on all decisions regarding land allocations in the public park surrounding Yerevan's Opera House taken from 1997 to 2003 by Zakharyan and his predecessors. We should note that the owners of the cafes constructed in that area are high-ranking officials.

Although the Court of Cassation's ruling has been in force for a month now, the Municipality has not yet made the decisions available. On March 10, 2005 the lawyer for the NGO, Ara Zohrabyan, submitted a request to the Court of Appeal on Civil Cases for a writ of execution. On March 17 th , the writ of execution was presented to the Yerevan department of the Service of Obligatory Execution of Writs. According to the Law on Service of Obligatory Execution of Writs, the obligatory executors must obtain the requested documents from the Municipality and give them to the journalists within two months.

But the legal dispute between the Municipality and the journalists does not end here. The Investigative Journalists of Armenia have applied to the Court of First Instance of Kentron and Nork-Marash Communities for compensation for monetary losses suffered during the drawn-out yearlong legal proceeding.

As required by the Civil Code, the Republic of Armenia (or the financial body acting on its behalf) must provide compensation for damages caused to a citizen or legal entity by the unlawful actions of state bodies or officials. The inaction of the Mayor of Yerevan cost the journalists' organization 308,300 drams, the amount they spent on legal services and costs. The state budget of the Republic of Armenia may have to pay the price for the Mayor Zakharyan's unwillingness to provide information.