The ruling closes the sequence that began on 29 August, when the prosecutor amended and supplemented a case first filed on 7 June, and continued on Tuesday with his detention by the Investigative Committee and a hearing he attended on a stretcher.
On Tuesday afternoon the Prosecutor's Office set out the charges: bribery on an exceptionally large scale, abuse of office, complicity in embezzlement and money laundering, under 5 articles of the criminal code. The core allegation is from 2008 to 2010: property with a market value of about 2.18 billion drams which, the prosecution says, he received from the heads of Progress Armenia and Local Developers through contracts that priced it at 484 million, registered to family members. Then 174.6 million drams on the Dilijan educational centre between 2011 and 2017, 208.9 million of the Brusov linguistic university's assets, and 151.1 million laundered through property transfers. At the rate Kommersant used, about 364 drams to the dollar, the 4 sums are $6 million, $480,000, $570,000 and $415,000.
The term matches the 2 months the courts gave Kocharyan on 27 August and his son Sedrak the day before.
The defence published footage of Khachatryan being lifted from a bed and carried to the courtroom, and called the transport a violation of his right to medical care. On Wednesday morning the Human Rights Defender opened a procedure on its own initiative over 'a video about Gagik Khachatryan circulated online' and sent staff to the detention facility to interview him, Armenpress reported at 11:09.
The term matches the 2 months the courts gave Kocharyan on 27 August and his son Sedrak the day before. Khachatryan's own son and nephew were arrested in absentia in July. Wednesday's reports do not name the court or the judge; on Tuesday Sputnik identified the judge as Aram Grigoryan.
Moscow's line on the Kocharyan file came from Lavrov on 28 August. On the Khachatryan file no Russian statement had surfaced in the wires by Wednesday afternoon, and the open relays of Putin's Bishkek press conference on Tuesday carried nothing on the Armenian arrests.