Vote-Buying Cases Were Widespread and Systemic, Says Deputy Head of Anti-Corruption Committee

YEREVAN — Armen Asatryan, deputy head of the Anti-Corruption Committee, responded on July 1 during closing arguments at the Constitutional Court to opposition claims that the recordings released by the committee had been edited and manipulated.

On July 1, the Constitutional Court continued hearing the closing arguments of the parties in the case challenging the results of the June 7 National Assembly elections.

According to Asatryan, the technical processing of the recordings was carried out solely to separate personal and everyday conversations and to present the portions that had legal significance for the case. He stressed that the applicants had not presented any factual evidence proving a causal link between the committee’s actions and voter behavior.

“The applicants did not present even one piece of factual evidence that would confirm a causal link between the actions of the Anti-Corruption Committee and electoral behavior or the election results,” the official said.

The committee representative particularly emphasized the facts established through the criminal proceedings, noting that vote-buying networks had been spread across all regions of the republic and in most administrative districts of Yerevan. According to him, this was not a political assessment, but a legal conclusion.

“Based on the combined analysis of the factual data established through the criminal proceedings conducted by the Anti-Corruption Committee, we can state that the cases of vote-buying were widespread,” he said.

Concluding his remarks, the representative said that only the committee’s targeted intervention made it possible to prevent the further development of criminal networks and limit their impact on the electoral process. He urged the court to rely not on assumptions, but on established facts, noting that constitutional justice requires legal grounds.