11:47, 18 January 2016

Levon Airapetyan refuses to plead guilty

Levon Airapetyan. Photo: http://www.sputnikarmenia.ru/russia/20160118/1666016.html

Today, the Zamoskvoretskiy Court of Moscow has begun considering the case of Levon Airapetyan, an entrepreneur of Armenian origin, accused of embezzling 700,000 US dollars from the mother of the ex-senator from Bashkortostan Igor Izmestiev.

Levon Airapetyan is one of the ten richest members of the Armenian Diaspora in the world and a major investor of Nagorno-Karabakh. He is believed to lobby the global recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Levon Airapetyan was detained on July 15, 2014, and since October 2014 is under house arrest. He is accused of embezzling 700,000 US dollars from the mother of Igor Izmestiev, the ex-senator from Bashkortostan. Initially, investigators claimed that Airapetyan was involved in the sale of the stock of the "Bashneft" Company, by means of which, according to investigators' version, the company was illegally taken out of the state control.

Today, at the court session on the merits, Airapetyan refused to plead guilty of the embezzlement, the RAPSI reports.

Airapetyan's advocate said at the court session that the case is "of merely customized nature," the RAPSI adds.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.