The Investigative Committee said on Tuesday afternoon that Khachatryan had been detained and brought to the committee, and that searches were under way at his home, his son's home and 21 offices and branches of businesses linked to the family. Its spokeswoman, Kima Avdalyan, gave the detail.
The court's decision is the next turning point; until it comes, the sequence is detention, court, and the defence filming both.
By evening the case was before Judge Aram Grigoryan. Video published by the defence shows officers carrying the 71-year-old out of his house on a stretcher; his lawyers say a spinal implant was displaced in the process and that two complaints about his treatment are already pending in Strasbourg. The Prosecutor General's Office disputes the claim that he is unfit for proceedings.
The prosecutor's decision of 29 August, which CAW carried on Tuesday, widened the charges: bribery, property registered to his son worth about 2.2 billion drams against a declared purchase price of 484 million, misuse of about 174.5 million drams on an education-centre contract, the acquisition of university property and laundering of 151.1 million drams. A separate civil claim seeks to confiscate 210 properties, 13 vehicles and 29 companies valued at 33 billion drams, about $85 million.
No ruling on the prosecution's request for pre-trial detention had surfaced in the Armenian wires by the time this pack closed. The court's decision is the next turning point; until it comes, the sequence is detention, court, and the defence filming both.
The case belongs to the same week as the 2-month detention of Robert Kocharyan and the investigation of Sargsyan, and it lands on the same day Pashinyan told Putin that Armenia's obligations to Moscow are intact. Khachatryan's son Artem and nephew Aram were arrested in absentia in July. The father is now in the same file.