Armenia’s Nature Protection Ministry Staff Arrested on Bribery Charges

Arsen Petrosyan, the Deputy Chief of the Armenian State Inspectorate on Nature Protection, has recently been caught in a case on corruption and arrested together with his chief Tigran Grigoryan.

In a reference to this case, head of the General Department of Fight against Organized Crime of RA Police Hunan Poghosyan said at a press conference today that he had not, in recent months, come across stronger evidence for cases of corruption than this one.

“I don’t think I have recently seen a more well-founded case on corruption than this one,” said Poghosyan.

According to him, preliminary interrogation of Arsen Petrosyan has revealed that he had been involved in another corruption in the same case.

Poghosyan also confirmed the rumors that Tigran Grigoryan, the former Chief of Armenian State Inspectorate on Nature Protection, used to be a police officer.

Both Tigran Grigoryan’s and Arsen Petrosyan’s cases have already been brought to court.

In 2009, Petrosyan inspected basalt and gypsiferous clay subsoil operated by “Delta-Fragment” Ltd. in Yerevan on assignment for the Minister of Nature Protection, reports Arka news agency.

For not including the detected violations in the protocol and reduction of penalty size, Petrosyan required 400,000 AMD from Vardan Aslanyan, director of “Delta-Fragment” Ltd., and received the bribe on December 16, 2009.