The Court of General Jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts interrogated the founder and president of the “Veles” human rights NGO, Marina Poghosyan, who presented to the court a number of new documents which have not been filed for the criminal case before. The information and documents presented by Poghosyan may be of crucial importance, and, as she stated, Arpi Meras, who  was acknowledged as the injured party, and a group of actors of Yerevan Drama Theater, presented false information to the preliminary investigation body and later also to the court.

First, one needs to understand how this criminal case was instituted. In July 2015, Yerevan Police Department was reported of the crime, signed in the name of a Canadian Armenian Arpi Meras, the owner of “Arpi Nursery School” in Toronto.

The report said that Marina Poghosyan had sold the real estate the de jure owner of which was Arpi Meras. Meras informed that she had never assigned Marina Poghosyan to sell it, instead she “had formulated some general powers of attorney” in her name. In other words, Meras blamed the human rights defender for a grave crime and demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice.

What was revealed during the preliminary investigation and the trial? At the first opportunity, Marina Poghosyan submitted three notarized letters of attorney to the investigative body, which were not of general nature, as Meras mentioned in her report, but they specifically related to the sale and the pledging of the apartment, as well as to performance of other transactions. The powers of attorney, respectively for 2008, 2010 and 2012, specifically stated that Meras authorized Marina Poghosyan “to dispose (use, sell, exchange, lease, pledge, give for gratuitous use) in her sole discretion” the apartment Meras owned, and to receive the sales sum as well. The power of attorney regarding the sale is distinguished by the fact that the authorized person, besides signing it, he/she also writes the word “Sell” with his/her own handwriting both in the power of attorney and the notary’s register. This is usually done so that the authorized person does not further declare that he/she has signed the document unconsciously.

After the submission of these documents, the investigative body did not quash the criminal case initiated against Marina Poghosyan. Instead, on the grounds of testimonies presented by some representatives of Yerevan Drama Theater and other witnesses, they tried to substantiate that Marina Poghosyan sold the apartment by abusing Arpi Meras’s trust.

By the way, the notary Marine Manukyan, who formulated the three letters of attorney, assured during her interview with the “Arajin lratvaka” (“The first news” channel) that she would read and explain the content of powers of attorney before signing them. Though Arpi Meras had written the word “Sell” by her hand it did not prevent her from announcing that she did not understand that she was going to authorize Marina Poghosyan to sell the apartment. It can be stated that she is making use of the fact of her being a diaspora Armenian, with this creating an impression that she does not understand anything from the documents, though she taught the Armenian language to Canadian Armenian children for many years.

As regards to the formulation of a “general letter of attorney”, Arpi Meras, while being questioned in court, stated that she had given it to Marina Poghosyan so that the latter could have her apartment repaired. Poghosyan, who appeared in the status of the defendant on this fact, presented documents, which substantiate that Meras could not have given a power of attorney for repair. First of all, there is no need for a power of attorney in case of repair of an apartment belonging to someone. Secondly, there is no word of “Repair” in any of the letters of attorney; and thirdly and most importantly, during the repair period of the apartment Arpi Meras was not the owner of it and she could not simply have given a letter of attorney.

Arpi Meras became a de jure owner of the disputed apartment only in May 2008 after she had arrived in Armenia from Canada. The documents submitted by Marina Poghosyan prove that the work of repair and refurnishing of the apartment was completed still in February 2008. By the way, Poghosyan had a power of attorney not for repair, but for the gasification, installation of a telephone line and signing of other contracts, but not from Arpi Meras, as the latter did not have any relation to the apartment in 2007 by any document. At that time Marina Poghosyan’s brother was the de jure owner of the apartment, who gave Poghosyan a letter of attorney of three months’ validity to authorize the latter to make the necessary deals on his behalf.

All the documents on repair and furnishing of the apartment submitted by the human rights defender (a contract with “ArmRosGazprom” CJSC, a receipt provided by the craftsman of the apartment repair, invoices for bathroom accessories, adhesives, paints and tiles) were given in 2007, with the exception of the gas boiler-related document, which was given in February 2008. “Everyone knows that a gas boiler is installed after the repair has been completed. This means that the repair of the apartment was completed in February 2008”, Marina Poghosyan mentioned.

By the way, Arpi Meras also admitted in her evidence given in court that when she arrived in Yerevan in 2008, and it was in May, the work of repair had already been completed. “She offered to do it (the repair), and I said “Very well”. When I arrived, I was very impressed and just delighted”, said Arpi Meras. It becomes clear from the documents and her testimonies that Arpi Meras could not have authorized Poghosyan to repair an apartment which was already fully repaired and furnished, and which the Canadian-Armenian lady was delighted with.

But this is not the only episode in which the testimonies given by Arpi Meras do not correspond to the reality. She stated that the disputed apartment was registered in her name when she signed a purchase and sale agreement with Marina Poghosyan’s father and brother. The notarized document, however, points to something else. The purchase and sale agreement was signed on May 16, 2008, when Marina Poghosyan’s father and brother were absent from the Republic of Armenia. Poghosyan had a letter of attorney provided by her brother and she herself sold the apartment to Arpi Meras. “This is a very important circumstance, as I myself sold formally the apartment to Arpi in the absence of my brother and father, as she bought it, but by documents it was registered in my brother’s name for five years. If I had wished to deceive Arpi, who had been my close friend for forty years, I would not have just sold her the apartment”, Marina Poghosyan says.

It is remarkable that the formal contract of sale of the apartment by which Meras became the owner and her first power of attorney was given to Marina Poghosyan on the same day with some minutes’ difference. “Both transactions were on the spot, registered under the successive numbers (1024 and 1025). This proves that just a few minutes after having become the owner of the apartment, Arpi Meras expressed a wish that I could fully dispose it”, Marina Poghosyan told to “Arajin lratvakan”.

According to Marina Poghosyan, she spent a sum equivalent to $ 40,000 US dollars to repair and furnish the apartment. Later, she gave Arpi Meras another 20 million Armenian drams so that to become the owner of the apartment, which, however, was not recorded by any documents.

“I did not take any receipt when I gave the 20 million drams to Arpi, first because we were like a family; my mother had died a long time before, still young, and Arpi was like a parent for me. When in 1993 Arpi paid $ 6500 USD and actually purchased the apartment, which was legally formulated in the name of my brother, did Arpi make any document or take any receipt that she had any connection to that particular apartment? She did not; it was done on the basis of mutual trust. Similarly, I did not formulate anything when I gave her that 20 million drams”, Poghosyan announced in court.

The human rights defender also responded to the question she was often posed. Why didn’t they conclude an apartment purchase and sale contract when Arpi Meras came to Armenia in 2010 so that the apartment would become de jure property of hers? “On April 21, 2010, a car accident was held in which the guilty party was disputable, and I filed a civil complaint to the court (ԵէԴ/0998/02/10), and the opposite party submitted a counterclaim, thus a property arrest warrant was decided for both of the parties, and in order to avoid any unnecessary arrest on this apartment only that a purchase and sale deal was not executed. As to the question why I did not formulate the apartment in the name of my son’s in 2010, I would say that my son was too young to own such a property and, secondly, he would go to the army in a month. By the way, that was the last time I had met Arpi in Armenia by the time of initiating this criminal case”, Poghosyan insisted.

Marina Poghosyan also touched upon the episode of the sale of the apartment. “I did not make any illegal bargains and, even if I would have wished, I could not do that as much as purchase and sale of real estate is done by further notary registration, actually, if I was not competent to dispose the property, no notary would ratify the transaction”.

The human rights defender proved with the documents presented to the court that she still intended to sell the apartment in 2013 and did it publicly and openly when posting announcements and photos of the apartment at the website of a real estate agency and other websites. “Is there any intelligent person who could post a statement on the Internet to make it known all over the world on the crime as if he/she was going to commit?”, Marina Poghosyan posed a rhetorical question, and then added that in the spring of 2014 she placed a poster in the balcony of the apartment overlooking the square. In order the court could understand the visibility of the balcony, which is even seen visible from Republic Square, Marina Poghosyan presented its photo.

Lastly, in May of 2014, a friend of Poghosyan’s childhood bought the apartment for 33 million drams. “Arpi was aware of the sale; I told her, though I did not have such a commitment as the apartment was mine, but exclusively from the human point of view, I told and informed her that the house was bought by a person, that should she come to Armenia, she could stay there, as that person, the buyer, would not live there or lease it”, Marina Poghosyan stated in her testimony.

Since the buyer sold the apartment afterwards, the preliminary investigation body concluded as if the purchase and sale contract signed in May, 2014, was false and that Poghosyan’s childhood friend assisted her to defalcate the property. “The preliminary investigation body ignored the fact that the buyer and I were childhood friends, and that if I had wished to formally sell the apartment to her, I would not have been posting sales announcements on purchase on the Internet and real estate agencies since 2013, and would not have stuck poster in the apartment’s balcony, to make all the world aware of that”, Poghosyan said.

Poghosyan also mentioned that when on July 29, 2015 she received a call from Yerevan Police Department and was verbally informed that she was suspected of committing some fraud, she did not believe it. “I immediately went to the Department where I was informed that as if Arpi had submitted an appeal against me; I did not believe it and could not believe as I had had a conversation with her just a few days before. I did not take it seriously and I thought it was a regular provocation by the police related to my professional activities”, Poghosyan informed in her testimony.

According to the human rights defender, she did not take seriously the initiated criminal case because that was not the first time that she had been subjected to fabricating a case against her. Let us remind that in 2014 another case was initiated against Marina Poghosyan, which, after eight months of investigation, was quashed by the preliminary investigation body and a conclusion was made that the person who had given false information about Poghosyan, the former RA Civil Aviation Chief Hovhannes Yeritsyan did not realize that he had given false testimonies against the human rights defender. “Perhaps they will come to the conclusion on this case, too, that Arpi Meras did not realize that she had given false information on me, especially that Meras, as Yeritsyan, is quite old – she is more than 80”, said the president of “Veles” NGO, Marina Poghosyan, in her interview to the “Arajin lratvakan”.

If the previous case did not reach the trial stage, this one has already been examined in court and reached the final stage. Marina Poghosyan is being accused of embezzling a particularly large amount of money (Article 179, part 1, point 1 of the RA Criminal Code) and is facing 5-8 years of imprisonment in case found guilty. The Canadian-Armenian Arpi Meras, the injured party, also has filed a civil suit against Poghosyan demanding from her 57.820.000 Armenian drams. We will reflect on Meras’s proprietary demand and the testimonies of her relations in our next publications.

Author: Arman Gharibyan

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