A hearing in the case of Ruben Vardazaryan, former Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, took place today, October 9, in the Anti-Corruption Criminal Court. The hearing is presided over by Judge Vahe Dolmazyan.

According to Iravaban.net, at the beginning of the session, Ruben Vardazaryan’s advocate, Aram Orbelyan, presented a motion to declare the evidence inadmissible.

He stated that materials obtained through unknown means, not disclosed in court, cannot form the basis of the charges or be used as evidence. The advocate emphasized that the prosecution had not made special efforts to substantiate the admissibility of the evidence.

Citing Article 127 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the advocate said that each piece of evidence is subject to evaluation in terms of relevance, admissibility, and sufficiency of all evidence in combination for resolving the case.

Addressing the recognition of the audio recording as inadmissible evidence, he stressed that it cannot have any probative value as it does not meet the conditions of admissibility of evidence set by the Criminal Procedure Code.

“The criminal case file does not contain a court decision granting permission to conduct any investigative or procedural action and to interfere with Armen Bektashyan’s private life for the purpose of obtaining evidence. The case file does not contain any information about which investigative or procedural action, as defined by the Criminal Procedure Code, was used to record the alleged conversation of Armen Bektashyan.

The case file does not contain any information about whether the person speaking in the recording, allegedly Armen Bektashyan, was aware that his speech was being recorded and could be used as evidence in a criminal case, or whether it was covert. The case file does not contain any information about where this conversation and its recording took place,” said Aram Orbelyan, continuing to present the points that, according to the defense, were not included in the criminal case materials.

The defense also contests the alleged editing of the telephone conversation involving the defendant Ruben Vardazaryan, noting that there is no expert conclusion regarding this, as certain sections related to the questions are not present in the recording. The advocate once again stated that the evidence should be declared inadmissible due to numerous “defects.”

Public prosecutor Ashot Zhamkochyan said that it is recorded in the examination where the aforementioned data was obtained from. He noted that during the interrogation, Armen Bektashyan did not deny the fact of recording with his participation, and did not provide the defense or the court with information that would give grounds to assume that the recording was made by state representatives – NSS employees: “These are unrefuted, unconfirmed suspicions. I believe the evidence is admissible and should continue to serve as evidence aimed at establishing any factual circumstance of the accusation.”

The court decided to postpone the resolution of this motion and to address the recognition of this evidence as admissible or inadmissible in the deliberation room when evaluating the evidence.

The trial ended, and the court moved to the stage of judicial debates.

According to Iravaban.net, prosecutor Ashot Zhamkochyan then delivered his speech.

He stated that the charges brought against the defendant have been substantiated by evidence presented during both the preliminary investigation and the trial: “The prosecution side, based on the results of the preliminary investigation and trial, has found it substantiated that R. Vardazaryan, occupying the position of Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council from July 19, 2019, being the head of a judicial authority, by performing actions unrelated to the powers granted to him by the Constitution and the Constitutional Law on the ‘Judicial Code’, using his official position and authority derived from his position, interfered with the administration of justice by Andranik Simonyan, judge of the Court of General Jurisdiction of Lori Region, namely, repeatedly demanded to change the detention chosen as a preventive measure against the defendant Vahagn Abgaryan to another preventive measure not related to deprivation of liberty in the criminal case concerning Vahagn Abgaryan and Vladimir Davtyan under his proceedings.”

It was noted that the defendant refused to testify during the preliminary investigation, while during the trial, he presented certain events in his testimony, certain conversations with various officials, stating that the initiated criminal proceedings had a covert purpose, namely to deprive him of his powers. The prosecutor noted that the defendant refused to answer questions regarding the accusation.

In his speech, Zhamkochyan referred to the audio recordings of phone calls between Ruben Vardazaryan and Judge Andranik Simonyan (now Deputy Director of the NSS), noting that it has been substantiated that the phone numbers belong to Vardazaryan, through which conversations with other subscribers took place.

It should be noted that in one of the recordings, Vardazaryan reminded Simonyan of his request to change the preventive measure of detention chosen against Vahagn Abgaryan, if possible:

• Mr. Simonyan, I want to remind you of what I said last time, it seems the hearing is today.
• Yes, Vahagn’s hearing?
• Yes.
• But, Mr. Vardazaryan, it seems they don’t have advocates for that, as far as I understand, today’s hearing won’t take place.
• But, as far as I know, the advocates are coming.
• Well, Inesa also said she’s not coming.
• Someone else is coming, a new person is coming with a power of attorney.
• Yes, it’s possible a new person might come and participate.
• I just wanted to remind you of what I said last time, my request.
• Yes, Mr. Vardazaryan, let them come, I’ll see. If it’s possible to have some other preventive measure, I told you last time too that I’ll take it into consideration.
• Alright, thank you.

The content of another telephone conversation presented by the prosecutor was as follows:

• Mr. Vardazaryan, I’m calling about Vahagn’s hearing, it’s at 2 o’clock. Now, was what you said about Marina, regarding Marina, or only about Vahagn?
• Marina has nothing to do with this hearing, it’s about Vahagn. Vahagn is represented by Marina, Marina is handling his defense.
• Yes.
• And whatever we do, we fall into this girl’s mouth, and she starts to criticize. If there are grounds, if he’s really sick, if he’s really ready to be useful to the army in some way, I’m saying this with my own eyes, let’s look, if there’s really a new circumstance.
• I understand, Mr. Vardazaryan.
• I want us not to become Marina’s chewing gum, you know. I’ve also spoken with the Prosecutor General, there’s a very unpleasant story in this case.
• Uh-huh.
• If you start examining the evidence, the examination of evidence will take 6 years, because when you listen to those recordings, a problem arises, they haven’t separated what’s important, and the prosecutor’s office says we should listen to all of them. There’s also this issue, how long should it take?
• I understand.
• But my request is this: if there’s a way to apply bail, we can apply bail and then judge this person normally, rather than becoming Marina’s chewing gum and the prosecutor’s office’s puppet.
• Alright, Mr. Vardazaryan, okay, I understand.

According to the prosecution, the defendant’s guilt has been proven by the preliminary investigation and trial.

Pointing to the relevant articles of the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, and taking into account the degree and nature of public danger of the crime committed by the defendant Ruben Vardazaryan, the method of committing the crime, his active role in the said crime, the public prosecutor demanded:

To find Ruben Vardazaryan guilty and sentence him to 2 years of imprisonment, as well as to impose an additional punishment of deprivation of the right to hold positions in state and local self-government bodies and their organizations for a period of 3 years, to leave the preventive measure applied to the defendant unchanged until the verdict enters into legal force.

According to Iravaban.net, the defense side petitioned to postpone the court session to complete and present the defense speech in its entirety.

Details are in the video.

Mariam Shahnazaryan