Pro-Kremlin Billionaire Detained In Armenia For Calls To Seize Power
2- 18.06.2025, 13:59
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Photo: Roman Shelomentsev / RBC
The detention came amid a scandal.
In Yerevan on the night of June 18, law enforcers detained Russian businessman of Armenian origin, head of the Tashir Group of Companies, which manages the RIO shopping mall chain, billionaire Samvel Karapetyan.
The Armenian authorities charged him with public calls for seizure of power (part 2 of article 422 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia. 2 of Article 422 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia), the businessman's lawyer Armen Feroyan said, News.am.
According to the publication, Karapetyan was transferred to the Investigative Committee of Armenia and a criminal case was opened against him. The billionaire does not admit his guilt, Feroyan said. On June 17, criminal police officers of the Armenian Interior Ministry conducted searches in Karapetyan's Yerevan mansion, Sputnik Armenia and News.am reported. It was reported that the law enforcers detained 20 people in the course of operative actions.
The detention came amid a scandal that emerged after Karapetyan's speech supporting the hierarchs of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC), which was earlier criticized by the republic's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. In early June, the AAC's Supreme Spiritual Council called on "competent state bodies" to intervene in Pashinyan's anti-church campaign, which, according to church representatives, threatens Armenian statehood and divides society, weakening the national spirit of Armenians.
Karapetyan took the former's side in the conflict between the church and the prime minister and for his part said that "a small group, forgetting Armenian history, the thousand-year history of the Armenian Church, attacked the Armenian Church and the Armenian people."
Pashinyan responded to this outburst by calling for the nationalization of the billionaire-owned Electric Networks of Armenia, which provides electricity to more than 1 million consumers. "This will happen quickly, and I call on all employees of the ESA to fulfill their labor duties in good faith. After nationalization, conscientiousness will be taken into account," Pashinyan wrote on social media (quoted by Interfax).
Also amid the conflict, the prime minister removed the director of the country's National Security Service Armen Abazyan, who had been in charge of the agency since November 2020, Sputnik Armenia reported, citing an official order. Deputy Director of the NSS Andranik Simonyan has been appointed as the SNB's deputy director.
59-year-old Karapetyan is ranked 44th in the rating of Russia's richest businessmen and 1102nd in the list of the world's richest people, according to Forbes. His fortune is estimated at $3.2 billion. Compared to last year, his fortune has grown by $300 million. The total revenue of Karapetyan-owned Tashir, which develops projects in real estate, construction, energy, finance, building materials and restaurant business, exceeded 260 billion rubles in 2024.
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