Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has charged Prosperous Armenia leader Gagik Tsarukyan with large-scale tax evasion and barred him from leaving the country, on the same day his party pressed recounts aimed at reversing its narrow exclusion from the new parliament.
Prosecutors said they initiated public criminal proceedings against Tsarukyan under Article 290, Part 3, Clause 2 of the Criminal Code, which covers tax evasion on a particularly large scale, and imposed a travel ban as a preventive measure. They disclosed no figure for the alleged unpaid taxes or further details. His party’s spokeswoman, Iveta Tonoyan, said the charges were politically motivated and accused pro-government media of misrepresenting the situation surrounding the case.
A legal question has since emerged over the prosecution itself. Under Armenian law, a sitting election candidate cannot be prosecuted, or deprived of liberty, without the consent of the Central Electoral Commission, except when the person is caught committing a crime or immediately afterward. The CEC’s spokesperson said the commission had received no such request from the Prosecutor General’s Office. Asked about the discrepancy, a Prosecutor General’s Office adviser, Lusine Martirosyan, said she would clarify the matter.
The charges escalate a case with older roots. Reporting in late 2025 indicated that a travel ban had already been placed on Tsarukyan within a criminal case originally opened in 2018 and 2019, and that the State Revenue Committee had resumed inspections at a casino he owns. The formal indictment now arrives in the immediate aftermath of an election his party is contesting.
Prosperous Armenia finished with 58,368 votes, or 3.996 percent, several dozen votes short of the 4 percent threshold, and has accused the Central Electoral Commission of “trickery” to deny it seats and hand the ruling Civil Contract party a more comfortable majority. The party says it found discrepancies between precinct protocols and the figures the CEC reported, including 120 of its votes across four polling stations that were not added to the official tally. It has requested recounts in several precincts, among them polling station No. 27/7, where it claims 76 of 77 votes were not counted, and a recount in two rural precincts in Kotayk province confirmed on Tuesday that the party had received 96 votes there, where the CEC had recorded only 4. A CEC spokeswoman said such “inaccuracies” would be corrected in updated summaries to be published Friday and in the final results, expected Sunday, leaving the party’s place in parliament in doubt until then.
The stakes extend beyond a single party. Prosperous Armenia’s entry would deny Civil Contract the three-fifths majority, about 60 percent of seats, needed to pass certain laws and to confirm senior law-enforcement officials and judges. Opposition leaders contend that this is precisely why the authorities are working to keep the party out.
The case echoes a pattern Tsarukyan has faced before. In 2020, parliament stripped his immunity and he was detained on charges including financial crimes and vote-buying in the 2017 election, which he denounced at the time as a “political order” by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. During this year’s campaign, Pashinyan pledged to strip Tsarukyan and fellow businessman Samvel Karapetyan of their main assets, announced the impending nationalization of Armenia’s largest cement plant, owned by Tsarukyan, and promised to “return to the people” the tycoon’s properties, including a hilltop villa outside Yerevan, if he won. Critics cite those statements as evidence that law-enforcement authorities are acting on Pashinyan’s orders.
Tsarukyan’s Son-in-Law Also Faces Prosecution
The Prosecutor General’s Office separately launched a public criminal prosecution against Karapet Guloyan, Tsarukyan’s son-in-law and a former Kotayk governor and former mayor of Abovyan, over allegations of damaging property placed under court restriction. The case concerns asset-confiscation proceedings involving property deemed to be of illegal origin. On May 12, 2026, ownership of roughly 91 percent of a property in the village of Arinj, in Kotayk province, was transferred to the Republic of Armenia following a binding court ruling, having been confiscated from Guloyan and his wife, Roza Tsarukyan. Investigators allege that Guloyan, aware that the Anti-Corruption Court had barred actions affecting the property, organized damage to the residential building, including dismantling exterior and interior wall tiles, removing doors and windows, and carrying out other alterations.
The indictment lands amid a broader post-election environment in which the seated opposition and the forces shut out of parliament alike are challenging the conduct of the vote. Hundreds of opposition members and supporters were detained on vote-buying charges before the election, and the arrests continued on election day. The final composition of parliament will not be settled until recounts and any appeals are resolved.
