An Armenian court has invalidated the National Olympic Committee of Armenia’s ownership of a state-owned land parcel in the Tsaghkadzor ropeway area, a 225.1-hectare property valued at 36.4 billion drams, or more than $90 million. The committee is headed by businessman and opposition leader Gagik Tsarukyan, who has served as its president since 2008.
The Administrative Court upheld a lawsuit filed by the Department for the Protection of State Interests of the Prosecutor General’s Office. According to the case materials, the State Committee of the Real Estate Cadastre registered the committee’s ownership of the parcel on December 29, 2005, based on a decision issued days earlier by the governor of Kotayk province and a related agreement, citing Article 23 of a law amending the Land Code.
The court concluded that the land had been transferred to the National Olympic Committee after that law had already entered into force, and therefore found that the organization’s acquisition of ownership under Article 23 could not be considered lawful. Once the ruling takes legal effect, ownership of the parcel will be registered in the name of the Republic of Armenia. The committee has filed an appeal.
The ruling arrives in the middle of an intensifying confrontation between the government and Tsarukyan. Days earlier, the Prosecutor General’s Office indicted him on charges of large-scale tax evasion and imposed a travel ban, while a separate prosecution targeted his son-in-law over a property in Arinj that was transferred to the state as an asset of allegedly illegal origin. The moves follow Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia party narrowly missing the 4 percent threshold to enter parliament, with 58,287 votes, or 3.9893 percent, the first time in years his party has been shut out of the legislature. The party is contesting the result before the Constitutional Court.
The campaign against Tsarukyan’s holdings tracks closely with what Pashinyan promised during the election. He pledged to strip Tsarukyan and fellow businessman Samvel Karapetyan of their main assets, vowed to “return to the people” the tycoon’s properties if he won, and has since said the government’s central agenda is “literally dispossessing the three-headed party of war.” Critics point to that sequence as evidence the asset actions are politically driven, while the government frames them as long-overdue accountability. The Tsaghkadzor registration itself dates to 2005 and has long been questioned, and with the committee’s appeal pending, the matter is not yet final.
