By Mark Dovich
In the run-up to Yerevan city council elections last year, Armenia’s ruling party allegedly took in at least tens of thousands of dollars in donations of publicly unknown origins, with many of the transfers made under the names of ordinary citizens unaware of the proceedings.
That’s according to an explosive investigation published Tuesday by the local news outlet Infocom, which found that a number of prominent business leaders and officials had also made generous contributions to the party.
What are the allegations?
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party collected nearly $1.3 million in donations from close to 1,000 people during its campaign to retain control of Yerevan city hall last summer, according to internal party records.
Those figures were released to Infocom earlier this month, nearly five months after the outlet first requested the records under Armenia’s freedom of information laws. Civil Contract complied only after the Freedom of Information Center, a local nonprofit, intervened and started legal action against the party.
The records are said to show that 87% of the total money transferred to Civil Contract came from fewer than 200 people, the majority of whom donated about $6,200, the maximum campaign contribution under Armenian law.
Reviewing publicly available information on all people who gave about $2,500 or more, Infocom found a number of ordinary citizens listed among some of Armenia’s most prominent business leaders and top officials.
When approached, many of them told Infocom they had no idea how the transfers had been made in their names, adding that making such large donations was well beyond their means. Armenia’s average monthly salary is just over $580, according to the latest numbers from the country’s statistics agency.
“I don’t feel like a proud citizen. It’s a bit depressing that they’re trying to deceive us,” one woman, in whose name Civil Contract received a $6,200 donation, said on condition of anonymity. “For me, these political topics make me want to cry, because they constantly deceive us and only think about their own self-interest.”
Ordinary citizens aside, the records are said to contain a who’s who list of some of Armenia’s leading entrepreneurs and officials. They range from executive managers at the country’s largest restaurant group and the director of the country’s biggest bottled water producer to senior employees at Yerevan city hall and the heads of eight of the city’s 12 districts.
A number of those donors work for companies that actively compete for government tenders, including Yeremyan Projects, the restaurant group whose eight senior managers each made the maximum $6,200 contribution. In recent years, the company has supplied food to the Armenian army, in addition to running some of Yerevan’s best-known eateries, like Lavash and Sherep.
Another donor, Vladimir Poghosyan, runs the Jermuk Group, Armenia’s largest mineral and natural spring water producer. It is also the company behind the construction of a new residential district in Yerevan where, in recent years, a number of senior officials have allegedly bought apartments at prices well below market value.
The Jermuk Group is ultimately owned by Ashot Arsenyan, a former lawmaker whose son Vahagn now serves as the mayor of the company’s namesake town. Along with Poghosyan, four of the younger Arsenyan’s top employees at Jermuk city hall each donated the $6,200 maximum.
What’s more, Infocom found, all the donations were made through Armeconombank, a financial institution ultimately controlled by the family of Khachatur Sukiasyan, a Civil Contract lawmaker and oligarch popularly known as Grzo.
A 2021 law pushed through by Civil Contract requires all political donations to be made electronically and capped contributions at $6,200, a move welcomed at the time by leading international organizations as a step toward making campaign financing in Armenia more transparent.
What’s been the reaction?
Civil Contract has largely kept silent on the matter, and the party did not respond to a request by Infocom for comment prior to publication.
As of Thursday, Civil Contract has not released an official statement regarding the investigation, though a senior party member, Gevorg Papoyan, did tell Radio Azatutyun Wednesday that Infocom’s allegations that some of the donations were made in ordinary citizens’ names, would, if true, be “highly unacceptable.”
Law enforcement bodies have not indicated if they plan to open their own probes following Infocom’s investigation.
What’s the context?
In municipal elections last September marred by record-low turnout, Civil Contract lost its majority on Yerevan’s city council, even while securing the highest vote share of any single party, at about 33%. After protracted negotiations, councilors voted along party lines to install Tigran Avinyan, a close Pashinyan ally, as mayor.
During the campaign, a coalition of leading local civil society organizations released a joint report alleging Civil Contract was abusing administrative resources to gain an unfair advantage at the ballot box, including favorable coverage on public media. The party rejected those charges.
Nonetheless, the elections were “generally considered free and fair, with no major systemic violations observed,” the European Platform for Democratic Elections, a poll monitoring group, concluded.
