I don’t see a legitimate purpose of arresting former head of the State Revenue Committee Gagik Khachatryan. The attorneys are planning on disputing the lawfulness of the decision on arrest in court. This is what Gagik Khachatryan’s attorney Yerem Sargsyan said during a briefing held in front of the building of the National Security Service today.

The attorney said the law envisages arresting a person to prevent a crime or immediately after a crime, if there are doubts that the person may hide from the body conducting proceedings or escape. However, according to Sargsyan, the assumed misuse was in 2010 and 2016, meaning there couldn’t be an aim to prevent a crime, and besides, Gagik Khachatryan, who is undergoing treatment in Germany, returned to Armenia and presented himself to law-enforcement authorities as soon as he received the phone call.

He informed that the National Security Service has been conducting searches in the places of residence of Gagik Khachatryan since morning. “I don’t think there were objects that could be of major significance for the case. They were looking for documents related to the case, but they didn’t find any, and therefore, there was no seizure,” he said.

Yerem Sargsyan also stated that even though there was a record to apprehend Gagik Khachatryan, the latter wasn’t apprehended, and he willingly showed up at the National Security Service.

The attorney informed that Gagik Khachatryan has rather serious health problems and mentioned that he and the other attorneys have addressed the body conducting proceedings on a regular basis to allow Gagik Khachatryan to leave for treatment for a short period, yet there is still no answer.

As reported earlier, based on the factual data obtained through large-scale operational intelligence actions and investigative operations that were launched a long time ago within the scope of the criminal case instituted by the Investigation Department of the National Security Service of Armenia back on February 2, 2019, the National Security Service conducted searches in the homes and mansions of former Head of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia, former Minister of Finance Gagik Khachatryan and several persons affiliated to him.

On the same day, after the searches, Gagik Khachatryan and Karen Khachatryan (former high-ranking official of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia) were apprehended under the suspicion of commission of crimes provided for by the Criminal Code of Armenia (misuse of official position causing grave consequences and extortion of property in particularly large amounts), taken to the Investigation Department of the National Security Service of Armenia and arrested.