Armenian corruption's tentacles grip Europe
OCCRP's bombshell investigation

ANALYTICS  06 February 2023 - 12:25

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has released sensational results revealing corrupt ties among lawmakers in several European countries and also the European Parliament, which has been shaken by the "Qatargate" corruption scandal since last year. This time the "hero" of the investigation was a Russian political technologist Sargis Mirzakhanyan, 33, who is closely associated with the Kremlin and the State Duma. Shortly after the annexation of Crimea, he was tasked with varnishing Russia's reputation abroad. It has been established, in particular, that interaction with members of parliament in several EU countries was not limited to paying for their participation in patriotic forums in Yalta and in observing Russian elections. Tens of thousands of euros were also allocated for introducing pro-Russian resolutions in European parliaments, and in case of "correct" voting an additional payment was envisaged. It was possible to uncover these facts thanks to the leaked contents of Mirzakhanyan's email account, which coordinated the work with European politicians.

Sargis Mirzakhanyan is a political consultant who held the post of assistant to State Duma deputy Igor Zotov at the time of Crimea's annexation. He was also a member of the expert council of the Duma committee for CIS affairs, Eurasian integration, and relations with compatriots. In addition, Mirzakhanyan was linked to the Presidential Administration, which is how he is listed in the phone books of some of his acquaintances. One of his main correspondents was Inal Ardzinba, at the time an employee of the Presidential Administration, working under Vladislav Surkov.

With Ardzinba Mirzakhanyan primarily discussed Ukraine. He was in charge of ordering publications in the Ukrainian and Russian media, hiring bloggers and internet provocateurs, and organising pro-Russian rallies. One of those with whom Mirzakhanyan actively cooperated in Ukraine was the chairman of the "International Party of Ukraine", Aram Davidovich Petrosyan, who was a well-known leader of the "Antimaidan" in Ukraine. Petrosyan applied to Moscow for funding for separatist projects and then reported on media results. For example, the number of publications on organised events and rallies.

Mirzakhanyan and his staff initially operated under the unregistered brand of the International Agency of Current Politics, but in early 2017 Hemingwaypartners LLC was established - it was owned by Satenik Markaryan, Mirzakhanyan's mother. Accordingly, the group's presentations began to be released under the Hemingwaypartners name. They brightly described Mirzakhanyan's implemented projects and his impressive capabilities: all kinds of promotion - primarily, but not only in media. From rallies to elections, from "levelling information threats and conducting counter-campaigns" to "creating a strategy of direct access to decision-makers".

Among the tasks that Mirzakhanyan's team pursued, the first item in the "Activities" document is "organisation of rallies, pickets and other protest actions in EU countries aimed at discrediting events or persons contradicting Russian foreign policy trends". In particular, the campaign launched after 2014 was aimed at legitimising the annexation of Crimea and promoting the Kremlin's narrative abroad. In the course of these activities, Mirzakhanyan's team established relations with politicians in several European countries. Thus, in the spring of 2016, a draft resolution was prepared by the Council of the Italian Veneto region, introduced by one of its deputies, Stefano Valdegamberi. The introduction of this resolution is identified in Hemingwaypartners' presentations as one of the international projects of Mirzakhanyan's PR group, and his mail almost a month before the vote reveals not only its text but also a document describing a kind of "action plan" and indicating that 29 MPs are ready to support the resolution. The resolution was indeed adopted (although only 27 people voted in favour) in May 2016. The resolution condemned the "discriminatory and unfair from the point of view of the principles of international law" policy of the European Union towards Crimea. The Veneto Council also did call for the lifting of sanctions and became the first European political institution to openly recognise Crimea as part of Russia.

Following Veneto, two other Italian regions, Liguria and Lombardy, adopted similar pro-Russian resolutions.

The Russian state media rejoiced, but Mirzakhanyan was not going to stop there. Already in June 2016, he writes a letter to a colleague with a strange text: "He sent me all related to the price tag for the vote. The rest as you see fit, but preferably as much as possible". What this means and who it is referring to cannot be understood from the correspondence, but a new "action plan" entitled "Resolutions in Austria and Italy" is attached to the letter. It shows that the resolution adopted in Veneto will have to go higher, already at the state level, to the Italian parliament. It is specified that Valdegamberi's colleague from the right-wing League of the North party, Senator Paolo Tosato, will be submitting the resolution to the Senate. At the end of the document in the "Estimate" section it says: "20,000 EUR + 20,000 EUR (deposit), in case of a successful vote +15,000 EUR in each case". A few days later, Tosato did introduce a draft resolution to parliament, but the Italian Senate rejected it on June 27.

"We will continue the fight ... at the regional level ... and will not give up trying to lobby this document in the European Parliament. It is particularly important now to remind colleagues in other national parliaments that such an initiative is needed," Tosato vowed at the time.

The same document also includes an estimate for introducing a similar resolution in the Austrian parliament: "20 000 EUR, in case of a successful vote +15 000 EUR". And the executor is MP Johannes Hübner from another nationalist party, the Austrian Freedom Party. In the same June 2016, Hübner did introduce such a resolution but, as in Italy, it did not find the support of the majority of MPs.

Mirzakhanyan's mail has other similar "action plans", in particular for Latvia, Greece and even for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, but it was not reported that they reached the stage of hearings.

Mirzakhanyan's team had the most success in Cyprus, where in July 2016 the national parliament did vote for a similar resolution. It differed from the Italian and Austrian ones in two additional demands: the removal of personal sanctions against individual Russians, and the demand for compliance with the Minsk agreements between Russia and Ukraine. The idea of such a vote was proposed by Areg Aghasaryan, Mirzakhanyan's assistant, who had established contacts in Cyprus through Dmitry Kozlov, a Cypriot-Russian businessman who had linked the group to local pro-Russian politicians.

The proposal presented by the leader of the Progressive Labour Party, Andros Kiprianou, in July 2016 echoed the demands elaborated by Aghasaryan and contained two additional demands: to lift sanctions against individual Russians and to implement the terms of the February 2015 Minsk agreements between pro-Russian forces and Ukraine. The proposal was accepted, leading to a dispute in the Cypriot parliament over the EU's position on sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea. In October 2016, Kiprianou was invited to a meeting in Moscow with Kozlov and two leading figures promoting investment in Crimea.

No estimate for promoting this story was found in Mirzakhanyan's letters, but in the same year, businessman Sergey Kozlov became one of the largest sponsors of the Progressive Party of the Working People. Kozlov donated EUR 15,000 to it.

The pushing of resolutions with the Kremlin narrative is only part of Mirzakhanyan's team's intense engagement with European politicians and media. A pool of right-wing MEPs friendly to Russian lobbyists has travelled to occupied Crimea several times. The most representative delegations participated in the annual Yalta International Economic Forum, established a year after the "annexation" of the peninsula. The correspondence includes a list of the names of nine European politicians invited to Yalta from Austria, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Poland and their fees totalling EUR 21,500. These payments are probably beyond official expenses, as travel expenses were discussed separately.

In addition, Mirzakhanyan's mail contains his correspondence with Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs. It shows that in 2017 Mirzakhanyan and Slutsky worked together to bring the largest possible delegation of so-called foreign observers - made up of the same right-wing European MPs - to the upcoming Russian elections. The "guest" observers were paid for their flights, accommodation, and expenses. The inviting party was the Russian Peace Foundation, headed by Slutsky. According to the leaks, the project had a budget of EUR 68,000. Among the observers were three MEPs: Jaromir Kolicek from the Czech Republic, Dominique Bildet from France and Andre Elissen from the Netherlands, as well as Aldo Karkaci, a member of the Belgian House of Representatives, Marek Krajci, a Slovak National Council member, Rumen Gechev, a member of the Bulgarian National Assembly and Pavel Gamov, a Swedish Riksdag member.

The correspondence ends in 2017, but a number of European MPs continued to "observe" the Russian elections afterwards. In 2021, for example, the aforementioned Stefano Valdegamberi took up his role again. When he visited the headquarters of the election observation, he said: "I was impressed by the transparency of everything that is happening here, by the way, you are involving so many people in the process, by how everything is controlled. I think we should follow your example, copy your system rather than criticize it".

It should be noted that it is no coincidence that Mirzakhanyan and his assistant Aghasaryan pushed the pro-Russian agenda through right-wing and pro-fascist European parties and MPs, whose sympathies for Moscow's policies and love for easy, but "dirty money" are quite strong. In this context, we should also mention the "Qatargate" in which pro-Armenian MEP Eva Kaili was involved, and the mastermind of the Armenian Friendship Group in the EP, billionaire Kaspar Karampetyan. All these facts clearly show that many European MPs and MEPs are ready to oppose the interests of Europe in exchange for the money that Mirzakhanyans, Karampetyans, and Aghasaryans are willing to bestow on them. These same individuals and parties also work against Azerbaijan at the behest of the Armenian lobby. Yes, these are often marginal, far-right, and fascist parties. But the overall picture of shame and pervasive corruption in Europe is not diminished by this fact. The examples of "Qatargate" or the network of MPs bribed by Karampetyan show that the classical political establishment is also actively bidding in corrupt auctions. Today we can state that the European Parliament is so mired in corruption and illegal lobbyism that it casts a shadow on the entire European Union.

Caliber.Az