ArmInfo.The court of general jurisdiction of Yerevan on October 10 decided to change the preventive measure against Former director of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund Ara Vardanyan. The lawyer of Vardanyan Ervand Varosyan wrote about this on his Facebook page.
He noted that the preventive measure was changed from the security deposit. "Ara Vardanyan was charged under Article 179 of the Criminal Code, that is, embezzlement. Actually, the pretext for the charge was the fact of non-delivery to the addressees of the products of the companies managed by the Fund. However, it is clear that Vardanyan could not have any relations, and the preliminary investigation body could not present evidence to the court, "the lawyer emphasized.
Varosyan also noted that he did not consider it a coincidence that while the judge was in the deliberation room, officers of the penitentiary institution arrived at the court and were supposed to escort Vardanyan to the pre-trial detention center.
"The presentation of this charge, as well as the election of a similar preventive measure against a person who for 1 year and 3 months did not violate the conditions of release on bail, suggests that the reason for all this is the socio-political activity of Ara Vardanyan," said the lawyer.
The lawyer also noted that the charge of embezzlement is absurd than the charges made against Vardanyan earlier. It should be noted that the NSS of Armenia detained Vardanyan in July 2018. The latter was charged with abuse of power. However, the latter was later released on bail. According to the NSS, Vardanyan admitted that he used the Fund's credit line of 25 million drams for bets at various online casinos. However, as representatives of the fund subsequently stated, Vardanyan returned the funds spent from the budget even before the intervention of law enforcement agencies.
To recal, recently Ara Vardanyan has been actively supporting the second president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, who is now under arrest.