Epress.am News from Armenia
Former Ambassador of Armenia to the Holy See at Vatican, ousted President Serj Sargsyan’s influential son-in-law, Mikael Minasyan is charged for illegally enriching himself, false income declarations and criminal legalization of assets.
The criminal charges were brought yet in March 2020 and on May 6, the court warranted his arrest. Minasyan is announced wanted. He is known to be outside Armenia.
In the meanwhile, Minasyan came live from underground on his Facebook with unconvincing promises to have served the Armenian people for the past 10 years and pledges to continue to serve the nation. He dismisses the charges, finds them “ridiculous” as does his attorney, a former investigator, Amram Makinyan.
Amram Makinyan, in his position as an investigator, is known to have cooked up the criminal cases of Jirayr Sefilyan and Gevorg Safaryan, both known to be political prisoners. Now as an attorney, Makinyan has also taken up the defense of ousted President Serj Sargsyan who is charged with money embezzlement.
Attorney Makinyan said in an interview to “Radio Liberty Armenia” that the investigating body characterized legal financial assets transferred from one account of Minasyan to his other account as “money laundering”. The amounts are, however, not mentioned. The transactions in point were made in 2017-2018.
The financial assets originated from sales of shares in a particular property. Transfer of money originated from the sales is ridiculous to be characterized as money laundering, claims attorney Makinyan.
As for false income declarations, Minasyan dismisses these charges too, and attributes them to the technical faults in the operation of the company in charge if filing his declarations. It appears that Minasyan declared much more income from the asset sales than in reality. Attorney Makinyan insists that the charges will be dropped once the person filing declarations on Minasyan’s behalf is interrogated. Investigators refuse to do so, he claims.
Minasyan is known to be a politician with sizeable wealth. Still being an Ambassador in the Vatican, he declared 3 mansions, 1 summer house, 1 apartment, shares in 2 companies, more than 200 paintings and artefacts by well-known artists. In terms of cash, in 2013 he declared 400 mln AMD, 268.000 EUR and 1.3 mln USD.
His name is currently implicated in the case involving Ucom telecommunications company and namely, the largest shareholders, Khachatryan family. The sons and other family members of Gagik Khachatryan, former head of the Tax Service of Armenia and a former Finance Minister, currently indicted and under arrest with various charges, are themselves charged with money embezzlement and illegal enrichment operated through Ucom company, where they hold majority shares. It has been announced that Mikael Minasyan is a de facto shareholder at Ucom, under Khachatryan family cover.