Karapetian infuriated Pashinian with his comments made during a visit to the Echmiadzin seat of Catholicos Garegin II, the church’s supreme head whom Pashinian has been trying to depose.
“I have always stood by the Armenian Church and the Armenian people,” he told News.am. “If politicians fail, we will intervene in the campaign against the church in our own way.”
“Why have the lewd ‘clergy’ and their lewd ‘benefactors’ become active?” Pashinian wrote on Facebook an hour later. “No problem, we will deactivate them again. And forever.”
Shortly afterwards, police reportedly attempted to search Karapetian’s villa in Yerevan only to be confronted by the tycoon’s relatives and supporters there. A police spokesman said “a group of individuals” were detained on the spot as a result. Karapetian’s brother Karen claimed that at least 40 people were taken into custody.
More than a hundred other people, among them opposition activists, gathered outside the plush house later in the evening as it was seemingly surrounded by masked officers of the National Security Service (NSS) and policemen. The latter did not enter the house and the angry crowd did not disperse as of 10 p.m. local time.
Pashinian admitted ordering the crackdown in a series of other social media posts. “Now I will interfere with you in my own way, you scoundrel,” he wrote.
Karapetian remained, meanwhile, defiant, issuing a short statement through his Moscow-based Tashir Group: “I will fight with all my might for the sanctities of the Armenian people, wherever I am, whatever happens. I will not allow anyone to desecrate our sanctities for whatever purposes.”
Karapetian swiftly won the backing of a wide range of opposition groups that are been up in arms against Pashinian’s drive to oust Garegin. They believe that the campaign is aimed at pleasing Azerbaijan and/or neutralizing a key source of opposition to Pashinian’s unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe. The church’s Mother See in Echmiadzin likewise strongly condemned the crackdown on the prominent tycoon, demanding that the Armenian authorities stop their “illegal actions.”
The crackdown also prompted concern from Russia, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that Karapetian is “threatened with arrest in Yerevan under strange pretexts” and that Moscow is therefore “closely monitoring the situation.”
“We will provide him with necessary assistance so that all his legal rights are respected,” Zakharova told the RIA Novosti news agency.
Pashinian’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasarian, implicitly accused the tycoon of acting on Moscow’s orders.
Karapetian, 59, was born and raised in Armenia. He moved to Russia in the early 1990s, making a huge fortune there in the next two decades. His Russian conglomerate comprises over a hundred firms engaged in construction, manufacturing, retail trade and other services.
With total assets estimated by the Forbes magazine at $4 billion, Karapetian is apparently the richest ethnic Armenian in the world. The assets include Armenia’s electricity distribution network.