Does he want to cheat Shoigu?

12/04/2006 Lilit SEYRANYAN

Everyone knows that as soon as our officials leave for abroad they visit casinos and waste money there. In most cases they take some businessmen with them to cover the real purpose of their visit. Of course they do their best to cover this information and not to let anyone find out about this in Armenia, especially the press. But MP Tigran Arzakantsyan couldn’t do that: he spread information that he was beaten in Moscow and these criminals stole his watches worth 50,000 dollars (Frank Muller) and promised to provide detailed information upon returning to Armenia. There are rumors that he is currently in the hospital and has brain injuries. According to our information from Moscow, he left the hospital several days ago and they don’t know where he is because he has turned his phones off. We tried to find out more information from our sources in Moscow. It turns out that the MP lost 850,000 dollars in Kutuzov casino of Moscow and promised to be back in five days and give them that money. But later in five days he went to that place with a Russian “criminal in law” and his brother to solve the problem with their rules.

One of the casino share holders is an Armenian living in Greece, who has left for Moscow from Yerevan. He was there at that time. Mr. Arzakantsyan started to quarrel with him and said that he would win that money back and would compensate them. Of course the share holder didn’t agree with this, since they were speaking with hand gestures. Later this conflict was interrupted by security officers of the casino and they beat Arzakantsyan and his criminal friends.

By the way, this casino has 3 share holders: the Armenian from Greece, Armenian MP Ruben Hayrapetyan and the head of the Russian board of emergency situations Sergey Shaigu, who is the main share holder.

Usually casinos have rules, according to which they shouldn’t beat their clients. Clients can do everything they like in casinos; they can drink, speak slang, scream, etc. In such cases security officers may just take them out of casinos, but not beat them. They may beat their clients only in case the clients deny what they have agreed on beforehand. This means that no one has stolen the “Frank Muller” watches and “Vertu” mobile phone of Arzakantsyan. According to our information he has spread such rumors in order to escape from paying at least 50,000 dollars from this 850,000 dollars that he lost in that casino. The RA Ambassador in Russia, Armen Smbatyan, who has good relations with Arzakantsyan, has dropped a diplomatic note. It is said that their relations are so good that Arzakantsyan drives cars with diplomatic numbers in Moscow.