Insights with Eric Hacopian, a political analyst, looks at the main events of the week in and around Armenia. (https://www.civilnet.am/)
Welcome to this week's episode of Insight. During this week's show, we're going to cover three topics. The first one is going to be the criminal charges that have been filed against former economics minister Vahan Kerobyan. Then we’re going to move on to discuss the implications around the murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. And then, we’ll close with some comments about the groundbreaking of TUMO in the city of Los Angeles.
Immediately after his firing as economics minister, the anti-corruption court in Armenia filed charges and put Mr. Kerobyan under house arrest for the next two months. According to Kerobyan’s lawyer, he does not accept any of these charges. Criminal proceedings were initiated against Mr. Kerobyan under the case of apparent abuses during a tender procurement contract for services to the ministry. The primary charge is that Synergy, an IT software development company, was chosen over a competitor on a $700.000 straight contract, while the competitor was offering services at a lower price. The procurement was for computer software services.
So far, there are absolutely no charges of personal enrichment or personal corruption by Mr. Kerobyan. And when we really look at it, the motives that are outlined by these charges are rather dubious․ For example, for an IT firm like Synergy that does 95% of its work actually around the world and not in Armenia, the amounts that are mentioned in this contract are sort of rounding errors for the scale of business that they do on a year․ And the reputational risk of getting into corruption for a contract of that size․ For a company that you know works in more than 50 countries, it is really not worth it.
And then, when it comes to Mr. Kerobyan himself, it is well known that he was a very successful businessman, both in the IT and other sectors. And he was also politically ambitious, and I don’t think he would throw away his political ambitions for what are essentially small amounts of money. If we are trying to decipher or understand this case, I think there are probably three different scenarios we are looking at.
And the first one is that Mr. Kerobyan is a target of internal political fighting inside the prime minister’s own administration. It is well known that he had many enemies inside the administration because he was seen as someone that’s too much in the limelight, getting too much credit for things, and being too ambitious.
The second one is that he could be a target of foreign actors. It’s well known that the NSS in Armenia is under the sway of or greatly influenced by certain major foreign regional power that usually targets pro-western ministers or people tied to the West or have those kinds of attitudes. And the third option could be that there actually was criminal activity, probably done by underlings working under Kerobyan, that is being used to target him.
And lastly, I want to note that the procurement system in Armenia is so Byzantine and so confusing that you can actually end up doing illegal things if you have absolutely no intention of doing so.
But, however we look at this, frankly, this is exceptionally disruptive. At a place where we don’t need it, in a ministry that actually has a lot of people that Mr. Kerobyan had brought in, especially from the diaspora, who are actually doing very good work for the country․
So whether Mr. Kerobyan is guilty or not, anyway you look at it, this is something that is not helpful to our efforts at this time.
Now we are going to move on to the second topic of the week, which is the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. His death was announced by the Russian prison system last Friday afternoon. He was likely murdered by the Russian regime, given the fact that he was only 47 years old and perceived to be in very good health. The official cause of his death was sudden death syndrome, which is apparently Russian for being poisoned.
Let’s talk about who he was. Mr. Navalny was the best-known leader of what passes for the Russian opposition to the extent that it’s allowed to exist. His murder, as heinous as it was, actually has a lot of political logic behind it.
He was the leader of the Russian opposition, and frankly, there are no other well-known leaders that can actually take his place of. In so many words, they’ve essentially decapitated the opposition to the regime. Furthermore, this almost likely guarantees that any post-Putin transition in Russia would be chaotic, and, I fear, bloody.
In essence, what Mr. Putin did last week with murdering Navalny is that he is essentially doing the full Assad, which is when during the Syrian Civil War Assad returned the choice between him and head-cutting jihadists that he let out of jail to become the opposition.
Putin is essentially telling the country your choices between stability with me and my friends or chaos with unknown political actors.
Now, what does this all mean for us? In overall, this is a very bad development because it is in everyone’s district, everyone’s interest that the transition to oppose Putin in Russia happen in as orderly and as non-violent of a manner as possible. The ideal Russia for Armenia is one that is neither too strong nor one that is collapsing on itself, which could actually unleash chaos in this entire region.
And, internationally, given the fact that we are talking about one of the true primary nuclear powers in the world, nobody wants a transition that can essentially tear the country apart or turn very violent.
Let’s move on to our last topic of the week, which is the groundbreaking of TUMO in the city of Los Angeles. Last week, the entire leadership of the city of Los Angeles, from Mayor Karen Bass to Council President Paul Krekorian, were at TUMO as part of a groundbreaking ceremony to open up the TUMO Technology Centers in Los Angeles. The center will actually be scheduled to open in December of this year and will start offer free training to American teenagers, as it is doing in Armenia and many other places around the world. The project itself has actually been funded by 25 million dollars from the state of California.
The lead person, in actually putting this together was the local Assembly member from the area, Adrin Nazarian, who, for the record, is actually a friend and a client of mine. Working with the government of California, they provided the initial funding to get this project started. I think this is a good moment; just sort of let’s step back and understand and note for a moment what this moment means.
Here you have the government of the State of California, which is the headquarters, which is where Silicon Valley is headquartered, the birth place of the IT industry in the world is paying an Armenian non-profit millions and millions upon dollars to set up an office to teach American kids how to code.
In conclusion, you know, I’m not a big believer in national pride unless it’s actually tied to specific accomplishments, because more often than not, it is not and it’s simply false pride. What we need to focus on is what we are doing today and what is it can uplift the country today. On this particular one, I can say that all of us collectively can keep our heads up, and this is something that we can all be very proud of as a great accomplishment.
Furthermore, something of note: this is actually a direct link between Armenian political engagement and empowerment in the diaspora, and you can note some of the names involved in the process as I was explaining to you how this came about. And it shows that, if done properly, working hand in hand with Armenia or Armenian institutions, we can actually create setups in which we are actually uplifting both Armenia and the diaspora communities around the world. Thank you for joining me in this week’s episode of insights.
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