ArmInfo.The Head of National Security Service of Armenia Artur Vanetsyan refutes the information about raiding Taron Margaryan's house, he told journalists about it on June 28.
Earlier, on June 18 Vanetsyan told journalists, that the next video material published by the National Security Service of Armenia will relate to activities of the "Yerevan" Foundation, which Board of Trustees is chaired by Taron Margaryan . As a result of the inspections, the director of the Foundation Ashot Ghazaryan and Deputy Head of the Yerevan Davidashen district Khachatur Kirakosyan were detained on June 14. As the press center of the National Security Service informed, an alarm was received from the citizens V.G. and A.Kh. that officials of the municipality for granting permission to build and formalize property rights, in addition to the payments established by law, required to transfer large amounts of money to the accounts of the "Yerevan" Foundation. During the preparation of the materials it was found out that, part of the received cash was not paid to the foundation's account, but was appropriated. On the basis of reports of the crime, a criminal case was instituted in accordance with Part 2 of Article 308 (abuse of official powers, which resulted in grave consequences by negligence) and Article 178, part 1 (fraud committed through the use of official position). However, the court of first instance made a decision to release Karapetyan and Khazaryan. According to Vanetsyan the court had enough evidences to take the director of the well-known Yerevan Foundation under arrest. However, the court made another decision and NSS has no right to interfere into the work of juridical bodies. "We do not interfere into work of juridical bodies this relates to arrests as well", he stated. However, according to Vanetsyan this does not mean that the activities held in the Yerevan Foundation and the violation revealed will be forgotten. "We continue our work and a lot of details soon will be presented soon", Vanetsyan said.
To recall, on June 25 the protest action was held against the mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan. A video-investigation became the reason of protest action. This video showed all the numerous property of the mayor, in particular, several apartments in various buildings, a house with a plot of land, a cottage, a garage, a public building, etc. Later the assistant to the premier Aren Mkrtchyan made a statement that all the information, published the day before in the video about Taron Margaryan's multi-million state, was transferred to the National Security Service. On his page in Facebook Mkrtchyan in particular wrote that the transferred materials will be attached to the case of the financial fraud of the Yerevan Foundation, whose head of the Board of Trustees is Margaryan. He also stated that he was ready to take part in the investigation of the case as a witness.
Against this background, yesterday the information leaked to the press that Yerevan's mayor Taron Margaryan had already written a resignation at his own request. According to the information, the Mayor has not gone to work for several days, and the last meeting of the 3rd session of the Yerevan City Council was held by the Deputy Mayor of Yerevan Kamo Areyan. "Mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan is absent at today's meeting because of health problems," said Areyan.