Robert Kocharian, a former Armenian president leading the country’s main opposition group, accused Pashinian and members of his entourage of illicit enrichment on May 19. Kocharian claimed that that at least $2 billion of $7 billion in public debt incurred by Armenia during Pashinian’s seven-year rule has been misused or wasted. He also decried the “disappearance” of money provided to Armenia’s government by the All-Armenian Fund Hayastan during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The fund appealed to Armenians around the world for urgent aid to Karabakh immediately after the outbreak of the six-week war. Hundreds of thousands of them donated roughly $170 million within weeks.
The charity headquartered in Yerevan redirected more than $100 million of those proceeds to the government. The Armenian Finance Ministry said at the time that the sum will finance the government’s “infrastructure, social and healthcare expenditures” necessitated by the war. Then President Armen Sarkissian and opposition leaders criticized the donation, saying that it undermined donors’ trust in the fund.
Pashinian complained about Kocharian’s allegations and again branded the 70-year-old ex-president a “corrupt person” as he chaired a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
“I noticed that the opposition is still talking about embezzlement and theft of money from the fund … The board [of trustees of the All-Armenian Fund Hayastan] discussed that issue and arrived at the conclusion that there is no basis [to the allegations.]”
Pashinian also pointed to the apparent lack of results of a parliamentary into the 2020 donation initiated by Kocharian’s opposition bloc in 2021.
Kocharian stood by the allegations through the head of his office, Bagrat Mikoyan.
“It can be concluded for sure that the $100 million was plundered and/or deposited in the foreign bank account of some official,” Mikoyan told the Yerevan.Today publication. “The [ruling] Civil Contract elite, which is getting fatter and richer on a daily basis, is vivid evidence of that.”
Pashinian already angrily denied any illicit enrichment of himself or his family during the previous cabinet meeting held on June 5. He said that Kocharian and other opposition leaders are trying to discredit him with false corruption claims.
Kocharian himself faced corruption allegations during and after his 1998-2008 presidency. Shortly after Pashinian came to power in 2018, he was charged with accepting a $3 million bribe from a businesswoman in 2008. A resulting trial of Kocharian ended without a verdict in 2023 after he agreed to plead the statute of limitations despite strongly denying the bribery charges.
Also, prosecutors have been trying to confiscate a long list of assets belonging to Kocharian and his extended family which they say were acquired illegally. The ex-president, who plans to mount another challenge to Pashinian in Armenia’s next parliamentary elections, has dismissed the asset forfeiture proceedings as politically motivated.
Pashinian has repeatedly claimed to have eliminated “systemic corruption” in Armenia. However, members of his entourage are increasingly accused by media of using their positions to enrich themselves, their families or cronies. Last month, Pashinian publicly threatened to jail opposition lawmakers who accused him of turning a blind eye to those media reports.