Today, on 25 February, the court of general jurisdiction of Yerevan will start the trial of the case of the Second President of the RA Serzh Sargsyan..

After the hearing, Serzh Sargsyan’s lawyer Amram Makinyan petitioned to include in the indictment excerpts describing Serzh Sargsyan’s personality, as both the litigants and the presiding judge need to know who the defendant in the case is.

The lawyer of the third President of the Republic of Armenia Ruben Hakobyan filed a challenge to the prosecutor Arsen Martirosyan.

According to the attorney, the prosecutor is biased towards the case. He noted that during the pre-trial proceedings sufficient measures had not been taken to prove Serge Sargsyan’s innocence. “The purpose was to give Serzh Sargsyan the status of an accused at any cost.”

The court left the consultation room to rule on the motion. It will be released tomorrow, 26 February.

Notably, on 20 January, the Special Investigation Service announced that the preliminary investigation into the case had been completed and that the indictment had been sent to the supervising prosecutor with a motion to send it to court. According to the SIS report, based on a combination of sufficient evidence obtained during the preliminary investigation, it turned out that by the organization of the third President of the RA Serzh Sargsyan and the incitement of the owner of Flash LLC Barsegh Beglaryan, with support of the former Deputy Minister of Agriculture Samvel Galstyan and the Head of Crop Management of the same Ministry Gevorg Harutyunyan, in the period of 25 January to 7 February, 2013, the former Minister of Agriculture Sergo Karapetyan an especially large amounts of money 489,160,310 AMD from the reserve fund provided for 15,391,765 liters of diesel fuel planned for the implementation of assistance programs of the Government.