YEREVAN, ARMENIA – Gagik Jhangiryan, the acting chair of Armenia’s Supreme Judicial Council, has resigned citing a “health condition” just two weeks after a voice recording was circulated, in which he could be heard demanding his predecessor to resign using veiled threats and pressure.
In the recording, which was revealed on June 20, Jhangiryan could be heard saying that if Vardazaryan does not resign, adverse things could happen to him, alluding to not just criminal charges, but also other unspecified threats. Vardazaryan was still a member of the Council at the time of the recorded conversation.
The Supreme Judicial Council is Armenia’s highest judicial body and is authorized to appoint and dismiss judges.
Vardazaryan was eventually fired from his position on June 23, just three days after he released the recording and a year after being suspended by the council.
Vardazaryan was elected head of the council in July 2019 and was suspended after a criminal case on charges of obstruction of justice was launched against him in April 2021. Since then, Jhangiryan, a close ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has been the acting head of the council. Until his formal dismissal as head of the Supreme Judicial Council, Vardazaryan technically still remained in his position, despite the suspension.
In the recording, Jhangiryan uses obscenities and expresses that his actions are ultimately aimed at preventing the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Robert Kocharyan, Armenia’s Second President and Pashinyan’s most feared political rival, to return to power. It is implied that his actions are at the behest of Pashinyan.
Jhangiryan had served as deputy prosecutor general during the Kocharian administration. During that term, Jhangiryan was arrested on charges of obstruction of justice.
Despite the public outrage regarding the tape and Jhangiryan’s statements, the Pashinyan government refused to initiate a criminal case against Jhangiryan for what legal analysts and oppositionists have called an ‘obvious crime’ and a vivid example of Pashinyan’s undue government influence on the judicial system.
In an interview Jhangiryan gave to Armenia’s public channel a day after the tape was revealed, he defended his claims and stated that he was misinterpreted and misunderstood. He acknowledged that he was aware that he was being recorded.
The remaining members of the Supreme Judicial Council have also declined to bring any disciplinary actions against Jhangiryan.
Pashinyan broke his regime’s silence about the case a week after the tape was revealed, downplaying the scandal and saying that it “overshadows” the process of his government’s “judicial and legal reforms”.
