Armenian Pastinfo newspaper reports the following: “During the preliminary investigation, the Special Investigation Service of Armenia used all the possible resources to examine the financial operations of second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and former top servicemen Yuri Khachaturov and Mikayel Harutyunyan, but failed to find anything. Even international partners have refused to collaborate, stating that there is a political component in the persecution.

In particular, according to Pastinfo’s sources, the Armenian authorities had addressed Switzerland with the request to provide information about the bank accounts of ex-officials arrested under the cases of the events of March 1-2, 2008 (Robert Kocharyan, Yuri Khachaturov, M. Harutyunyan) and impose attachment on those bank accounts, saying that they might have bank accounts in Switzerland. Let us note that the Special Investigation Service assumed that there may be bank accounts, but the Swiss authorities responded very sharply.

Recording the fact that the Armenian authorities haven’t presented any actual data (neither bank account nor name of bank nor any other specific information), Swiss law-enforcement authorities emphasized the following: “It is impossible to process the claim for international mutual assistance filed on August 14, 2018. In reality, this claim does not provide sufficient details to consider the activities of the suspected persons as doubtful and does not provide evidence that there are funds in a Swiss bank. Besides, the connection with Switzerland is not clear in the claim, and the requested actions are formulated very extensively.” Moreover, Switzerland noted that from the study of the submitted motion it follows that the study concerns political violations.

The Swiss government’s response states that, according to Swiss law, the Swiss authorities can’t grant the claim for mutual assistance, if it concerns an offense that is a political or related offense for the claimant.

The Armenian authorities had addressed Switzerland with a motion to impose attachment on the properties of Robert Kocharyan and other ex-officials right after Kocharyan was arrested and charged with overthrow of the constitutional order in 2008. Basically, even the distant Switzerland had noticed the political nature of the charge and refused to collaborate with the Armenian authorities.

The sensational document sent to the Armenian authorities is signed by the Federal Office of Police of Switzerland.