The Special Investigation Service of the Republic of Armenia has submitted a clarification regarding the statement by Aram Orbelyan, one of the attorneys of second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan.

The clarification of the Special Investigation Service reads as follows:

“During a press conference held today, Aram Orbelyan, one of Robert Kocharyan’s attorneys, touched upon the statement by Head of the Special Investigation Service of the Republic of Armenia Sasun Khachatryan on the distribution of an amount from private funds to soldiers and presented the document of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia as evidence. Referring to this, Aram Orbelyan said he was bewildered and didn’t understand how amounts from private funds could be distributed through an official bulletin of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia.

In relation to this, we deem it necessary to inform that just the fact that those amounts were allocated with indications made on the forms of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia still doesn’t mean that they were state funds. The fact that the specified funds were not the budgetary or extra-budgetary funds of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia was reported to the Special Investigation Service of the Republic of Armenia in an official letter of the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia dated 26 September 2018.

The copy of the specified letter is in the case forwarded to the court, and so it is also available for the attorneys, including Aram Orbelyan (volume 36, c.t. 95).

Taking into consideration the aforementioned, the only thing left to do is to assume that attorney Orbelyan either hasn’t become fully familiar with the materials of the criminal case or is intentionally trying to distort the facts obtained in the criminal case. Thus, we urge him to refrain from such a working style and not distort the facts existing in the materials of the criminal case when choosing his tactics as an attorney.”