Armenian Court Orders Return of $95 Million Tsaghkadzor Land to State, Dealing Blow to Gagik Tsarukyan’s Olympic Committee

A court in Armenia has invalidated the ownership registration of a vast state-owned land parcel in the country's premier mountain resort town of Tsaghkadzor, dealing a significant legal setback to the Armenian National Olympic Committee and its longtime leader, businessman and politician Gagik Tsarukyan.

The ruling comes just days after Tsarukyan's Prosperous Armenia Party failed to secure representation in Armenia's newly elected parliament, narrowly missing the 4% threshold required to enter the National Assembly in the June 7 parliamentary elections.

Armenia's Prosecutor General's Office announced that the Administrative Court upheld a lawsuit seeking to overturn the registration of ownership rights held by the Armenian National Olympic Committee (ANOC) over a 225.1-hectare plot of land located in the Tsaghkadzor ropeway area.

According to prosecutors, the land is valued at more than 36.4 billion drams, making it one of the most valuable state property disputes currently before Armenian courts.

The Armenian National Olympic Committee, which has been headed by Tsarukyan for years, obtained registration of the property in December 2005. The registration was based on a decision issued by the governor of Kotayk Province and provisions contained in amendments to Armenia's Land Code.

However, the Administrative Court concluded that the legal provisions cited could not serve as a basis for granting ownership rights to the organization because the land transfer occurred after the relevant legislation had already entered into force.

As a result, the court declared the registration of ownership rights invalid, finding that the state-owned property should not have been registered in the name of the Olympic Committee.

Once the ruling enters into legal force, ownership of the 225.1-hectare land parcel will be transferred back to the Republic of Armenia.

The decision arrives at a politically sensitive moment for Tsarukyan, whose Prosperous Armenia Party suffered a major setback in the recent parliamentary elections. According to final results published by Armenia's Central Election Commission, the party received 58,287 votes, or 3.9893 percent of the vote, falling just short of the 4 percent threshold required for parliamentary representation.

The outcome is the first time in years that Tsarukyan's political force failed to secure seats in Armenia's legislature, significantly reducing its influence on the country's political landscape.

The court ruling also comes against the backdrop of increasingly sharp rhetoric from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during the election campaign. In the weeks leading up to the June 7 vote, Pashinyan repeatedly targeted opposition leaders, including Gagik Tsarukyan, Robert Kocharyan, and other political rivals, accusing them of corruption and pledging to recover assets that he said had been improperly acquired from the state. The prime minister's statements fueled criticism from opponents, who accused his government of exerting political pressure on rival figures, while government officials maintained that efforts to reclaim state property and pursue legal cases were part of a broader anti-corruption agenda.

—

Support independent reporting from the region by subscribing to The Armenian Report. Our team is funded solely by readers like you.