On June 2, the vice president of the Russian-Armenian business cooperation association, senator of Kalmikia, Levon Chakhmakhchyan and the chief accountant of the association, Igor Arushanov were arrested in the office of the Russian “Transaero” company.
This arrest was done on the basis of their information, claiming that high ranked officials take bribe to hide some accounts and facts from the clearance chamber. Chakhmakhchyan’s daughter’s husband, who works at the clearance chamber, was also arrested. Chakhmakhchyan, being a deputy, used his right to be untouchable and was released. But the next day, head of the Russian Federal Council, Sergey Mironov wrote a letter to head of the Kalmikia government to stop Chakhmakhchyan from using his deputy untouchable right. According to the law, head of the Federation Council has a right not to include any explanations in his letters. Before this incident, in May, Mironov wrote such letters regarding four other senators, one of which was Armenian too (Arkadi Sargsyan). According to lenta.ru, head of the Transaero company board of directors, Alexandr Pleshakov had invited Chakhmakhchyan to their company to discuss issues concerning further cooperation between their company and the association. They were going to discuss issues concerning making their company advertisements in Armenia. Arushanov was also with Chakhmakhchyan. During the meeting Pleshakov and Chakhmakhchyan gave souvenirs to each other. According to the same information, during their conference, Pleshakov made a hint about the recent activities of the clearance chamber regarding their accounts. According to them there was incorrect information and he asked Chakhmakhchyan to correct that information with the help of his son-in-law. At the end of the conversation Pleshakov took out a case under his table and gave it to Arushanov. According to Chakhmakhchyan, he hadn’t studied that case and didn’t know what was in it. He thought that there were souvenirs in that case. According to Chakhmakhchyan, he didn’t even notice how Arushanov took it. And when they went out of Pleshakov’s room, they met federal security service officers, who were waiting for them on the other side of the door. According to Chakhmakhchyan, they treated him very bad and made some offensive remarks about his nationality. Chakhmakhchyan showed them his certificate of being untouchable as a deputy, but the officers told him that he had bought that paper on the streets. As for the case that Arushanov had taken, there was $300.000 in it. Some time later, the general prosecutor’s office of Russia made an announcement saying that that was only one part of the bribe, and that the total sum 1,5 million. In two and a half hours Chakhmakhchyan was released and made it just in time to take part in the meeting held by the business cooperation association, where he was elected as head of that organization.
According to the Russian press, the general prosecutor’s office of Russia has brought a criminal case against Chakhmakhchyan’s daughter’s husband and Arushanov on the basis of the fourth clause of the 159th article of the Russian criminal code (large fraud by a person or a group of people).
As for Chakhmakhchyan, he denied the accusations of him taking bribes. “I am being framed, this was organized by head of the Transaero company”, said the senator to Interfax. He also said that when organizing that provocation, they had also planned to arrest his son-in-law. But Chakhmakhchyan didn’t mention any details concerning the reasons for that provocation. On June 5, head of the clearance chamber, Sergey Stepashin confessed that he was the one who started all this with the purpose of discovering corruption-related cases. Besides that, there are rumors in Moscow claiming that this was not aimed towards Chakhmakhchyan, rather the president of Kalmikia, Kirsan Ilyumjinov, with whom Chakhmakhchyan has good ties. In 2002 Chakhmakhchyan went against the Kremlin and backed Ilyumjinov during the elections, and later the latter supported Chakhmakhchyan to be elected as senator. According to this web page, this is the anti-corruption activities that the Russian president promised to organize a month ago. The most amazing thing here is the fact that the general prosecutor of Russia, Vladimir Ustinov promised to discover serious cases of corruption, but in spite of this, he was removed from his position on June 2. Russian media has been writing about Chakhmakhchyan’s arrest as a discovered corruption case for the past week now.
It is worth mentioning that Chakhmakhchyan is yet another victim who used to be backed by Putin. In fact, this rich politician from Russia also has good ties with president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and he visited Armenia during the 2003 presidential elections.
P.S. Itt is difficult to assume how this story will end and where the truth lies. One thing is clear: this incident coincided with the fact that bodies of Armenians are being found in Russia. We wonder whether this is a coincidence…