The incumbent authorities have included in their proportional electoral list the director of a company who used to be suspected of corruption and was linked to me. Robert Kocharyan—the second President, leader of the "Armenia" bloc which will run in Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections, and its candidate for prime minister—said this during today’s campaign meeting in the city of Masis of Ararat Province.

Kocharyan clarified and said the director is the head of Spayka LLC whom the authorities had accused of avoiding to pay AMD 7,000,000,000 in taxes, after which the director was fined AMD 14,000,000,000. “Now the director is on the electoral list. Nobody knows what happened to those funds. Moreover, the authorities said this company is linked to me,” Kocharyan added.

The second President recalled that the authorities would promise peace when they were the opposition, but they saw a war that led to major casualties. “They promised an economic boom, but saw economic decline, increase of the level of corruption, and no corrupt official was punished,” he stressed, adding that the authorities have changed five directors of the National Security Service and four chiefs of the General Staff of the Armed Forces in the past three years when the country faces serious security threats.

“Voting against the incumbent authorities will be a punishment for them, and voting for them will mean encouraging their actions and sharing responsibility for the victims, wounded soldiers and the missing captives,” he concluded.