Armenia’s Court of Cassation in Yerevan has upheld an appeal related to the chief executive of Air Armenia (Yerevan), going against earlier verdicts in a case involving the alleged embezzlement of AMD681.9 million drams (USD1.45 million), local media reported.
Privately-owned Air Armenia suspended flight operations in October 2014 due to financial problems. Plans to restructure and relaunch the carrier came to nothing.
Arsen Avetisyan, its chief executive and owner of a 51% shareholding, had been charged with misappropriating the above sum, which had been collected from ticket sales and should have been deposited with the state as a departure tax in 2014 but allegedly was not. The amount was subsequently garnished from Air Armenia’s bank accounts.
A 2019 ruling at the Yerevan Court of First Instance acquitted Avetisyan after finding that he had not taken the funds for himself and therefore did not misappropriate them. The court found that no money had been illegally withdrawn from the company’s cash register or settlement account.
The General Prosecutor’s Office of Armenia filed an appeal against that decision, but this was rejected by the Criminal Court of Appeal, which found that the defendant should be acquitted not on the basis of a crime but on the grounds of lack of guilt. The General Prosecutor’s Office again appealed, and it was this that the Court of Cassation addressed on April 8.
The court agreed with the prosecutor’s office’s grounds for complaint, concurring that Avetisyan, despite being obliged to transfer the duty to a state fund in time, did not do so, directing it instead to cover the expenses of Air Armenia in an effort to keep the company afloat.
The Court of Cassation considered that the fact that the company had been in a difficult financial situation and failed to fulfil its obligations, as the prosecutor’s office had found, and this could not be a reason to exclude the existence of features of embezzlement in the defendant’s acts. It ruled that the court of appeal’s verdict be overturned and said it would send the case back to that court for a new trial.
