YEREVAN. – The criminal case, which was initiated at the Special Investigation Service (SIS) on the basis of the report prepared in connection with the video posted on Facebook by former ambassador to the Vatican Mikayel Minasyan, has been dropped. Lusine Sahakyan, a lawyer for Artur Vanetsyan, former Director of the National Security Service (NSS) of Armenia and chairman of the opposition Homeland Party, mentioned this in a conversation with journalists Friday after leaving the NSS building.

"We applied to the SIS to receive the case materials. We received an answer that since Mr. Vanetsyan was called [to the NSS] as a witness, they would not provide materials, but the criminal case was dropped due to lack of corpus delicti.

If we consider the list of participants, given the nature of the statement, it is very interesting who the person was who should have been the possible accused because Mr. Vanetsyan had the status of a witness; that is, on the principle of ruling out, there is only one official left in this country who could be charged. Let [PM] Mr. [Nikol] Pashinyan answer here whether he was called to the SIS or not. That one is Mr. Pashinyan," Sahakyan stated.

To note, in a video posted on Facebook on May 2, Mikayel Minasyan had stated that on the instructions of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, former NSS director Artur Vanetsyan had met with him in Rome, proposed to him pay a symbolic sum to a foundation in Armenia, stop his fight against Pashinyan, and to no longer return to the country.