Armenian MP suspends participation in dominant faction 

ArmInfo. Member of the  National Assembly of Armenia Hakob Aslanyan is suspending his  participation in the ruling Civil Contract faction of the National  Assembly of the Republic of Armenia for a month. He stated this in an  interview with Factor TV. The reason for this step was the story with  Aslanyan's friend, Member of the National Assembly Hovik Agazaryan,  who was expelled from the faction. 

In his statement, Aslanyan noted that on December 3, he became a  participant in a process that directly concerns information about a  person's personal life. "In any other situation, I would not have  made this statement, but since we are talking about my friend Hovik  Agazaryan, I am forced to do so to strengthen my convictions. In all  these internal turmoil, I have not found any circumstances that would  make me feel embarrassed for my friend. I will say more, on Saturday,  a meeting of representatives of our team with a high-ranking  official, a representative of the legal system took place with my  participation, the participation of Hovik Agazaryan and his three  sons. Hovik Agazaryan, in the presence of everyone, demanded that his  sons be familiar with the documents that were presented to the  faction, and if he could not give sufficient explanations on these  documents, he would resign from his parliamentary mandate. But this  did not happen.  Moreover, one of Agazaryan's sons stated that he was  familiar with the contents of the records on his phone, which do not  have any basis for the father to resign from his parliamentary  mandate," Aslanyan noted.

He added that based on the above, he decided to suspend his  participation in the Civil Contract faction for a month. Aslanyan  turned to the head of the faction, Hayk Konjoryan, with a request to  form a parliamentary working group, to which Hovik Agazaryan will  give his explanations. "If the members of the group cannot dispel my  doubts, then my further cooperation with the faction will become  impossible and will call into question further cooperation," Aslanyan  said, adding that he had fully familiarized himself with the  submitted documents and did not find anything criminal in them. 

The day before, Hovik Agazaryan, who left the parliamentary faction  of the ruling Civil Contract party, appealed to the Prosecutor  General's Office of Armenia through his lawyer. He demanded that an  appropriate legal procedure be carried out in order to find out how  his personal information and personal data ended up in the hands of  third parties from the Anti-Corruption Committee. As part of the  criminal case in which Ovik Agazaryan is a witness, the  Anti-Corruption Committee seized his phone, the contents of which  ended up on the desk of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. And the  latter made some information public at a meeting of the "State Duma"  board. Let us recall that a few days ago, a publication about the  organization of leaks by Ovik Agazaryan, allegedly containing state  secrets, was sent to the Anti- Corruption Committee of the Republic  of Armenia to decide on initiating proceedings.