Salbi Ghazaryan, director of Civilitas Foundation was invited to the National security Service, after which she informed the Radio Liberty that on Thursday she communicated the details of the criminal case involving the foundation to Ambassadors of EU countries and the US in Armenia. She hopes this meeting will influence on the alleged case. “I want to stop this process because this is absurd and nonsense; it is not logical and does not give honor to anybody. I am very grateful to the Ambassadors, who are busy in their work but gave time to visit us and they said that they would be closely looking into the future developments and they would do their best to help. All of us should understand that our government and judicial system that is doing this kind of thing to such a nonsense issue will not bring fame for our country and judicial system in general. There has been no other organization transparent like this; the Civilitas has not committed violations. If they had questions, they could be other ways of getting the answers. Instituting legal proceedings and criminal case is not the way it should be done,” said S. Ghazaryan.
Both Ghazaryan and Vardan Oskanyan, who is a current member of PA party and former foreign affairs minister, assure that this case is politically motivated order. In answer to radio Liberty’s question who gave the order the director of the foundation said, “I don’t know who has given the order. In Civilitas we are doing work that is transparent, non-traditional and not easy to manage. We have Civilnet, which is run by young people who are creative and are trying to look at political, social and economic issues banned by the youth differently. But we are saying that we don’t ban those issues and should be a part of those processes. I think there are people who don’t like that. If this is a tool to drive us far from our job, they will not succeed.” In answer to question whether American philanthropist John Huntsman may make any announcement, whose name was associated with the case, S. Ghazaryan said, “I believe there is need for that. I cordially hope that the day will not come for that not because Mr. Huntsman does not want that but because of the fact that it will mean a message to our donors that we are thanking them for giving us money but in ten or twenty years we may turn back to them and say that we are suspicious about their activities being legal. If we want to give such message to a person like him, I have nothing to say.”
The Civilitas published an announcement thanking all countries and organizations that are assisting the foundation. The Civilitas also published the list of the amounts received, thus showing that they are transparent in their work. The announcement writes the following: “Civilitas foundation thanks the government of Norway for continues support and for the approved grant amount of 8,5 million Norwegian crowns (1,5 mln dollars) for three-year project to start from September 2012. The foundation also thanks Eduardo Ernekyan for a recent donation of 150,000 dollars. A number of ongoing projects implemented by the Civilitas are receiving support from the US German Marshall Fund Black Sea foundation, US Embassy and USAID (through Counterpart International organization). Civilitas expresses gratitude to all former and current partners and donors such as the governments of Germany, Norway, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Great Britain, the USA, OSCE, Eurasia Partnership Foundation, the US German Marshall Fund Black Sea foundation. Civilitas is expressing special gratitude to philanthropist John Huntsman.
Vardan Oskanyan and Salbi Ghazaryan have been invited to the National Security Service to be questioned as witnesses, but they refused to give any testimony. Currently there is no information on the future plans of the NSS on this case.