Head of NSS refutes information about raiding Taron Margaryan`s house

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.