After the announcement by the prosecutor's office about the involvement of the Honored Art Worker of the Armenian SSR, Armen Smbatyan, and the Honored Artist of the Republic of Armenia Sergey Smbatyan, in a 10-year-old "terrible fraud" and their arrest in a proceeding that has been under investigation for three years, I receive many calls from journalists, friends, and simply compassionate strangers with a request to comment on the situation, Yervand Varosyan, the lawyer of former ambassador Armen Smbatyan and conductor Sergey Smbatyan wrote on his Facebook page.

“Dear compatriots, I am an advocate and a lawyer, I cannot comment on the legal mess presented to you. I do not know how to interpret the verse about the "fraud" that has crossed all the boundaries of imagination, where even the 166 million AMD, allegedly calculated as damage, is presented in the form of 966 million with the help of an equilibristic trick, probably to make the verse sound more terrifying.

I do not know how to comment on a story that has nothing to do with crime, and that my defendants have nothing to do with. I do not know how to interpret the persecution of talented and creative people who have served Armenia all their lives, who have upheld Armenia’s good name and reputation worldwide. Neither can I interpret the blow to the career of one of the brightly shining stars with a great present and future as a representative of Armenia on world stages. Therefore, I cannot even imagine what could be the reason and the intention of all this.

However, I hope that any absurdity ends the way it begins. By all the existing means in the legal arsenal, the issue will be raised in all possible instances, and eventually justice will be restored.

May God be with all of us, granting us what we deserve for our actions,” reads his Facebook post.

Former ambassador Armen Smbatyan and conductor Sergey Smbatyan together with a businessman are accused of presenting a fake business plan to the government in 2012 to build a multi-functional complex and as a result misappropriating 300 square meters of land from Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School in Yerevan, worth of more than 166 million AMD (more than 430,000 USD).