Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Reuters/Benoit Tessier
By Lucy Papachristou
(Reuters) -Authorities in Armenia indicted a senior politician from a pro-Russian opposition coalition for corruption-related crimes on Tuesday, as prosecutors prepared to file charges against two other MPs.
Opposition groups have decried the criminal investigation against the politicians - Seyran Ohanyan, Artsvik Minasyan and Artur Sargsyan - as politically motivated.
The three are members of Armenia Alliance, a parliamentary group led by Robert Kocharyan, who served as the South Caucasus country's president from 1998 to 2008.
Led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia has moved closer to the West, signalling that it wants to join the European Union and distancing itself from traditional ally Russia.
But Pashinyan, who swept to power during street protests in 2018, has entered into a bitter confrontation in recent months with senior religious figures as well as a top businessman and a former political rival as he faces parliamentary elections next year.
Armenian prosecutors say Ohanyan and Minasyan participated in a scheme to in which the former, then the country's defence minister, acquired a plot of land belonging to a nature reserve and built a house there. Minasyan, a former environment minister, gave his assent to the sale, investigators say.
Ohanyan, the parliamentary leader for Armenia Alliance, said he had been summoned to appear before investigators and that he disagreed with the charges, the Armenpress state news agency reported on Tuesday. Minasyan also denies wrongdoing.
Prosecutors say the third Armenia Alliance MP, Sargsyan, participated in an attempted coup plot allegedly orchestrated by a prominent Christian cleric last month. The cleric, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, is currently in detention.
Sargsyan has denied involvement, according to Armenpress.
Parliament on Tuesday gave prosecutors a green light to indict Minasyan and Sargsyan, after earlier stripping them of their parliamentary immunity.
By Lucy Papachristou
U.S. President Donald Trump defended former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday in a social media post that said his former ally was the victim of a "witch hunt," a term Trump has used to describe his own treatment by political opponents.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on Friday he was unsure whether a U.S.-brokered peace deal would hold with Democratic Republic of Congo and warned he would respond to any "tricks" from his neighbour.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.