PACE promises operative response to "Vardan Oskanyan's case"

• Tuesday, October 9, 17:04

The criminal case against Vardan Oskanyan, ex-foreign minister, MP from Prosperous Armenia Party, and the Civilitas Foundation, over money laundering, will be in the focus of attention of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, says the statement by Naira Zohrabyan and Vahe Hovhannisyan, members of the Prosperous Armenia Party, delegates to PACE.  The statement reads that many deputies and representatives of the leadership of
PACE are concerned over the situation around Oskanyan.

"European parliamentarians and the PACE leadership representatives assured us that they come out in support of Prosperous Armenia Party and Vardan Oskanyan," the authors of the statement say.  They recalled that documents related to "Oskanyan's case" were distributed to all the parliamentary delegations to PACE.

"Our European colleagues, in turn, asked us to operatively report on any new processes in the given case and promised to operative response to it," the statement reads.

In addition, the delegates from Prosperous Armenia Party told European deputies that they are ready to offer their positions in the delegation to Vardan Oskanyan as the status of a PACE deputy grants certain immunity.

To recall, Vardan Oskanyan was deprived of deputy immunity on October 2.  Prosecutor General Hovsepyan appealed to the Parliament for a permission to involve Vartan Oskanian as an accused party in the money laundering case against Civilitas Foundation. Oskanian has already made a statement saying that Aghvan Hovsepyan's appeal was a political order.  On June 12 the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia submitted details of the criminal case against Civilitas Foundation initiated on May 25 (article 190.3 of the Criminal Code of the RA money laundering). The criminal case against the Civilitas Foundation concerns the $2mln transaction for the sale of Huntsman Building Products, an Armenia-based company owned by US-based Polymer Materials and Huntsman International.