The current authorities do not reveal the culprits to this day, which is further evidence that senior officials are behind all this. Political scientist Gagik Hambaryan wrote about this on his Facebook page on Saturday, and regarding the large amount of smuggled cigarettes from Armenia that were detected and confiscated in Russia.

"The scandal surrounding the $4mn-worth smuggled cigarettes supplied by the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan's brother-in-law, MP Hrachya Hakobyan, to Krasnodar [Russia] (with the aim of moving to Afghanistan) continues.

Despite the fact that Armenia's main brother-in-law categorically denied the information, many media outlets published detailed information yesterday on who, apart from Hrachya Hakobyan, were involved in that criminal act.

The most ridiculous thing was the ‘disclosure’ of one of the media outlets that serve the interests of the authorities, that the company that produced and transported cigarettes belonged to former officials.

In other words, according to the primitive authors of this defining revelation, the situation in Armenia is such a ‘mess’ that the former authorities can take out $4mn-worth of smuggled cigarettes from Armenia and do all that without the knowledge of the current authorities?

(…) Armenia’s [incumbent] authorities are behind this large-scale crime.

No one can take $4mn-worth smuggled cigarettes out of the country without the knowledge of the authorities.

By the way, the current authorities do not reveal the culprits to this day, which is further evidence that senior officials, including Hrachya Hakobyan, are behind all this," Hambaryan wrote, in particular.