On 17 June, the nephew of Armenia’s former President and current Republican Party leader Serzh Sargsyan, Narek Sargsyan was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison by the Yerevan court, reported jamnews.
While delivering his verdict, the judge explained that Sargsyan had already been under arrest for some time, and his prison term would end in three and a half years. After hearing the judge’s verdict. Sargsyan waved at the journalists and left the courtroom.
Narek Sargsyan was extradited from the Czech Republic to Armenia on 10 December 2019 (Caucasus Watch reported). Narek Sargsyan fled Armenia shortly before his family’s mansion in Yerevan was searched by the National Security Service (NSS) in July 2018. The NSS claimed that he asked one of his friends to hide his illegally owned guns, cocaine, and other drugs in a safer place. It released a video showing two suitcases purportedly filled with those items. In the villa, investigators found large amounts of cash, jewellery items as well as over a dozen drawings by the 20th century Armenian painter Martiros Saryan. He was afterwards arrested by the police in Prague. During the arrest, he reportedly produced a fake Guatemalan passport identifying him as Franklin Gonzalez.
