Armenian Prosecutors Initiate Legal Action to Seize Illegally Acquired Assets

YEREVAN (ARKA) — The Office of Armenia’s Prosecutor General said a legal action has been initiated to seize the assets owned by Serob Harutyunyan and Anush Antonyan, which are deemed to have been acquired illegally.

The assets comprise an apartment on Northern Avenue in Yerevan, two BMW cars and 50% of a company called Orange Gas.

The law on seizure of illegally acquired property was approved by the parliament of Armenia in April 2020. It allows authorities to confiscate private properties and other assets deemed to have been acquired illegally.

More precisely, the law allows prosecutors to investigate individuals in case of having “sufficient grounds to suspect” that the market value of their assets exceeds their “legal incomes” by at least 50 million drams ($103,000

If such discrepancies are found prosecutors can ask courts to nationalize those assets even if their owners are not found guilty of corruption or other criminal offenses.

Earlier, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that from the position of the European Court of Human Rights, the seizure of illegally acquired property is a normal practice in the fight against corruption and is not considered a restriction on human rights. ($1 – 478.27 drams).