Levon Zurabyan, vice chairman of the Armenian National Congress and the party’s prime ministerial candidate, commented during a Facebook livestream on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement that “very soon the business backbone of Tsarukyan and the Prosperous Armenia leader will be broken — the Ararat Cement plant will become state-owned and belong to Armenia.”
“If the state can attack the institution of private property in such a purely politically motivated way, that will lead to bad consequences,” Zurabyan said, adding that the impact would be severe in terms of investment.
“In Pashinyan’s Armenia, the law and the Constitution are not respected. Those people who begin to pose a threat to Pashinyan become targets of persecution. The same is happening in the case of Gagik Tsarukyan. As long as this person did not pose a threat in Nikol’s calculations, everything was alright. As soon as he began to pose a threat, they moved to retaliation,” Zurabyan said.
Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office earlier reported discovering multiple violations in the privatization process of Ararat Cement.
On May 5, prosecutors sent a letter to the Armenian government proposing that it consider measures aimed at addressing the violations and their consequences, including the possible appointment of a temporary manager at the company.
