Karapetian infuriated Pashinian with his comments made on Tuesday at the Echmiadzin seat of Catholicos Garegin II, the church’s supreme head whom Pashinian has been trying to depose. The tycoon accused him of “attacking” not only the ancient church but also the Armenian people.
“Since I have always been on the side of the Armenian Church and the Armenian people, I will have direct participation,” he told News.am. “If politicians fail, then we will also participate in all of this in our own way.”
Pashinian responded with a series of social media posts in which he admitted ordering law-enforcement authorities to punish Karapetian. Shortly afterwards, police reportedly attempted to search Karapetian’s villa in Yerevan only to be confronted by the tycoon’s relatives and supporters. With the angry crowd growing bigger in the following hours, masked officers of the National Security Service deployed around the house on Tuesday evening also refrained from entering it and forcibly taking Karapetian away.
The latter emerged from his residence and was escorted to police custody at 3 a.m. Armenia’s Investigative Committee indicted him several hours later, saying that his comments to News.am amount to a call for a violent overthrow of Pashinian’s government.
Karapetian’s lawyers laughed off the accusations. “Anyone can watch that video and assess whether it constitutes a crime or not,” one of them, Liana Gasparian, told reporters.
Nevertheless, the law-enforcement agency petitioned a Yerevan court to allow it to hold Karapetian in pre-trial detention. The court granted the request following a hearing that lasted for about six hours.
“The decision is clearly illegal,” Gasparian told journalists. She said the defense lawyers will appeal against it.
Hundreds of people, among them opposition leaders and senior clergymen, gathered outside the court building in a show of support for the Moscow-based billionaire known for his lavish donations to the church. Karapetian remained defiant even after Pashinian’s pledges to nationalize his largest business asset in the country: the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) utility.
“I will never give up my principles and values, because at their core is Armenia itself, the boundless respect and love for my homeland, our traditions, our history, our Church,” he said in a written statement. “Dear compatriots, I am confident that we will unite and be able to find a way out of the severe situation our country is in.”
The crackdown on Karapetian has drawn strong condemnation from a wide range of opposition groups that are up in arms against Pashinian’s drive to oust Garegin. They believe that the campaign is aimed at pleasing Azerbaijan and/or neutralizing a key source of opposition to Pashinian’s unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe. The church’s Mother See in Echmiadzin has likewise demanded that the Armenian authorities stop their “illegal actions.”
Russia has also expressed serious concern, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying Moscow is “closely monitoring the situation.” Several Russian lawmakers openly deplored over the criminal proceedings late on Tuesday.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Wednesday that these statements as well as Russian state TV coverage of the issue constitute “blatant interference in Armenia's internal affairs and an encroachment on our sovereignty and democracy.” Yerevan has sent a protest note to Moscow, Mirzoyan told Armenian pro-government lawmakers.
Karapetian, 59, was born and raised in Armenia. He moved to Russia in the early 1990s, making a huge fortune there in the next two decades. His Tashir Group conglomerate comprises over a hundred firms engaged in construction, manufacturing, retail trade and other services in Russia. With total assets estimated by the Forbes magazine at $4 billion, Karapetian is apparently the richest ethnic Armenian in the world.