Armenian Company Raided After Owner’s Antigovernment Calls (UPDATED)

• Naira Bulghadarian
Law-enforcement officers searched the offices of Armenia’s leading homegrown online taxi-hailing service and confiscated its computers at the weekend just days after its owner urged people to attend ongoing antigovernment protests in Yerevan.

Khachatur Grigorian, who founded the company GG a decade ago, has openly supported the protests sparked by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan and led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian. In a June 12 Facebook post, he said that every citizen must take to the streets and join Galstanian in demanding Pashinian’s resignation “if you ARE ARMENIAN, if you want me to respect you when you say hello to me.”The chief of Pashinian’s staff, Arayik Harutiunian, condemned Grigorian’s appeal as “offensive” and “unacceptable” the following day.

“I hope that business will understand after this subversive movement that such expressions only harm business and do not create any added value in our society,” Harutiunian wrote in what appeared to a warning to other businesspeople sympathizing with the protest movement.

Two days later, officers of Armenia’s Investigative Committee raided GG’s headquarters in Yerevan as well as the homes of its top executives, citing a tax evasion case which it said had been opened against the company a year ago. The law-enforcement agency did not formally charge Grigorian or any company executive as of Monday afternoon.

In a statement released on Sunday, GG rejected the criminal proceedings as “baseless and illegal” and linked them to its owners’ “active civic stance.” A company lawyer described the raids as a “continuation” of the top Pashinian aide’s Facebook post.

“Almost all office computers are being taken away,” the lawyer said on Saturday, adding that this will paralyze the work of the company which also provides on-demand truck and package delivery services.

Archbishop Galstanian, who has repeatedly urged wealthy entrepreneurs to back his bid to oust Pashinian, also condemned the raids as politically motivated.

“[The authorities] are trying to terrorize various structures, organizations, parties, individuals who have been involved in this struggle for truth,” charged the protest leader.

The Investigative Committee, which is run by one of Pashinian’s trusted lieutenants, denied any political motives behind its actions against GG. It did not say why it waited for a year before conducting the searches.

Meanwhile, GG’s executive director, Haykaz Aghayan, said on Monday that the company’s operations were swiftly restored after the disruption caused by the confiscation of its more than 20 office computers.

“The problem was solved due to the fact that we operate all over the country, have several offices with equipment which we can use as a replacement,” Aghayan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “So we’ve brought in alternative equipment, and everything is going well at the moment.”

In his words, the company has also attracted more taxi drivers and seen many downloads of its mobile phone apps as a result of the crackdown.