The court hearing on the criminal case of Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan and former deputy prime minister Armen Gevorgyan has resumed Tuesday in Yerevan.

The previous court session was adjourned due to the absence of Gevorgyan, who was attending the session of the new parliament.

The court process will continue after a long break due to vacations, the absence of lawyers, and about a month due to the snap parliamentary elections on June 20 and the opposition “Armenia” bloc's appeal to the Constitutional Court. The bloc is headed by Kocharyan, but he did not take the parliamentary mandate, whereas Armen Gevorgyan represents this bloc in the new parliament.

Initially, former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan—now also a member of parliament—and former CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov were also defendants in the case.

But after the Constitutional Court’s declaring Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code unconstitutional, the charges against Ohanyan and Khachaturov were dropped and their criminal prosecution was terminated.

The criminal prosecution against Kocharyan and Gevorgyan under the aforesaid article was similarly terminated.

All that remains is the charge against Robert Kocharyan of taking bribes and the charge against Armen Gevorgyan of money laundering.

However, the Prosecutor General believes that the charge under Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code can be replaced by another "convenient" article. In this regard, the Prosecutor General's Office has petitioned to the Constitutional Court regarding the Criminal Procedure Code provisions which prevent the re-qualification of the charge.