Hetq.am reported earlier this week that Hayk Konjorian, the parliamentary leader of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, paid a private developer 54 million drams ($140,000) last year to buy a two-story, 240-square-meter house in an upmarket residential area just outside Yerevan. The investigative publication cited the construction company as saying that that properties of the same size built by it now cost 75 million drams.
Konjorian declined to comment on the apparent discrepancy. He denied receiving any discounts and lambasted the publication after the release of its article.
“Everyone knows that the value of real estate during construction is much lower than after construction is complete,” he wrote on Facebook. “I bought the property at market value, with a 20-year mortgage loan.”
Like other senior ruling party figures, Konjorian received the loan from a commercial bank owned by the family of Khachatur Sukiasian, a wealthy government-linked businessman who also holds a seat in the Armenian parliament. The company that built his house belongs to another businessman, Babken Hovakimian. The latter also owns a real estate firm that happens to be managed by Konjorian’s brother.
The price officially paid by Konjorian is just below a legal ceiling set for a long-running government scheme that has exempted home buyers from income tax for the duration of their mortgage repayments. The senior lawmaker thus qualified for the tax break.
Varuzhan Hoktanian of Armenia’s leading anti-corruption watchdog affiliated with Transparency International believes that Hetq.am raised legitimate questions about the property acquisition. Konjorian may have indeed bought the house below its market value because of being an “influential official,” according to Hoktanian.
“But non-governmental organizations do not have the tools to delve deeper and know [for certain] what really happened,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
By contrast, Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian defended Konjorian on Wednesday, saying that there is nothing wrong or suspicious about his property deal. She also declared that that Armenian officials, including herself, deserve to have expensive homes because they “work very hard.”
“What's a $200,000 house that I shouldn't have in ten or twenty years?” said Galian, who received an “anti-corruption champions award” from the U.S. State Department a year ago.
The vast majority of Armenians can hardly afford buying such properties during their lifetime.
Konjorian is not the first Armenian official to come under media scrutiny over an expensive deal. It emerged in 2023 that Defense Minister Papikian, another senior member of the ruling party, paid $168,000 for a new apartment in Yerevan. Hetq.am estimated its market value at $412,000.
The apartment is located in a new residential complex built by a company controlled by businessman Ashot Arsenian, who used to have close ties to former President Serzh Sarkisian. Arsenian’s son Vahagn was investigated for draft evasion before being elected mayor of the town of Jermuk on the Civil Contract ticket in December 2021. Arsenian Jr. became the governor of the surrounding Vayots Dzor province earlier this year.
Ashot Arsenian also faced criminal proceedings. Infocom.am revealed in April 2023 that Sasun Khachatrian, the then head of Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), halted the criminal investigation in 2021 shortly after purchasing an apartment in the same neighborhood for 71 million drams ($185,000). According to the online publication, this was significantly less than what the owners of other apartments in the same building paid Arsenian’s construction firm.
Pashinian defended Papikian at the time. The premier again claimed to have eliminated “systemic corruption” in Armenia.
Armenian media have since continued to accuse members of Pashinian’s entourage of enriching themselves or their cronies. In March 2023, unknown hackers hijacked the YouTube channel of the Yerevan daily Aravot just as it was about to publish a video report detailing expensive property acquisitions by several senior government officials and pro-government lawmakers.