Aram Orbelyan, a lawyer of Armenia’s currently arrested second president Robert Kocharyan, has declared that the former president has no connection with the actions attributed to him.

At a press conference on Monday, the attorney noted that in recent days the Armenian authorities have been busy "publicizing" the accusation; that is, shaping public opinion by spreading their own position through state-funded Public Television and press releases. According to him, the authorities, realizing the weaknesses of the case, are doing this in order to later say that the judge is to blame.

The lawyer presented a number of episodes, emphasizing that the accusation is built on the absurd assumption that Kocharyan was obliged to know about everything happening in Armenia, approximately as it was in the case of the tragic events of March 1, 2008 in Yerevan, when it is not described what he did or did not do.

The case suggests that the president is a higher authority than the mayor, but this is not the case, and the same is true for members of the government.

“It is clear that now it is perceived that [PM Nikol] Pashinyan is the leader of everyone, but this is not the case according to the constitution [of Armenia],” Orbelyan noted.

The most important accusation against Robert Kocharyan is the function enshrined in law: approving the decisions adopted and signed by the government; that is, what the president did within the framework of his duties is presented as “participation,” while in the period from 1995 to 2005 there is not a single case when the president did not approve the government’s decisions. It is also not clear how Kocharyan is connected to the persons who allegedly violated the law.

One of the absurdities of the accusation, according to the lawyer, is the multiple difference in the purchase and sale amounts for various years. “He bought in 2001, he sold in 2021.” As an example, he noted that a similar picture is also seen in the cases of several other individuals with whom the authorities have no issues.

“No one can explain how Robert Kocharyan, remaining in freedom, can interfere. Maybe he will go to the archive and erase the signatures with an eraser?” the lawyer noted sarcastically, repeating that what is happening has nothing to do with the legal process, and if this were an economic process, the arrest would be even more inadmissible.

When asked whether Kocharyan could not approve the Armenian government's decisions, the lawyer noted that the government adopts 30 to 40 decisions per week, they are transferred to the presidential staff, and after checking that the decision is indeed the government's, they are approved.

"The president does not have the authority to change anything. In no case was the president the initiator of the decisions. Contradictions between government decisions do not make them illegal. The government manages the property, and different decisions do not yet mean that something illegal has been done. If he had not approved, it would’ve turned out that he has interfered in the sphere of government functions," the lawyer explained.

And regarding the statute of limitations, he confirmed the defense's position: the timeframes have been exceeded.