New details were revealed in the case of Alexander Arzumanyan (accused of money laundering). The Arminfo agency has distributed an announcement about this, based on its Moscow sources. According to this information, the group of Armenian investigators who were sent to Moscow about a month ago discovered new details. “In particular, Vahan Shirkhanyan and Alexander Arzumanyan met Levon Grigor Markos (the latter being under investigation) in Moscow and reached certain agreements. As a consequence, on April 27 and 28, in the names of 9 individuals, they received 19,800 dollars (in the names of each of the just-mentioned 9 individuals), from Moscow, through “Converse Bank” CJSC (total 178,200 dollars). Alexander Arzumanyan has been charged with Article 190, section 3, point 1 of the Criminal Code, and has been in detention from May 10 2007. On May 24, 2007, the RA General Prosecutor’s Office applied to that of the Russian Federation to provide legal assistance, to hold different investigation activities, interrogations, and seizure of certain bank documents in the territory of the Russian Federation, and has sent two representatives responsible for the proceeding to Moscow. The inspectors have brought extremely interesting and large-scale information that can create serious problems for Vahan Shirkhanyan as well. Particularly, the inspectors sent on the mission to Moscow found out that the 9 individuals whose names were used for the money transfer were quite unaware of it. That is to say, without their knowledge their passort data was used to send the money from Moscow. In Moscow, Sashik Aghazaryan, who had undertaken the responsibility of transferring the money, came out as a witness. He stated that he had allocated the money at Alexander Arzumanyan’s request, for the latter to cover certain every-day problems, and not for the wedding party of Vahan Shirkhanyan’s daughter. He said he doesn’t know Vahan Shirkhanyan personally. The mechanisms Aghazaryan used to transfer the money were also quite interesting. "It can’t be ruled out that in the near future another group of investigators will leave for Moscow,” writes Arminfo. Let’s remind that last week Arzumanyan’s attorney, Hovik Arsenyan, announced that the group of inspectors who were in Russia was not able to find any evidence against his client.
