Hayk Demoyan: Pashinyan Engaged in Agent Activities Against Armenia
Dr. Hayk Demoyan, historian and former director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of engaging in activities detrimental to the interests of the Republic of Armenia. These include alleged money laundering through the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, the destruction of financial documents, the disappearance of large sums of money, and the appointment of individuals with theft allegations to the Museum’s Board of Trustees. In particular, Demoyan—citing criminal cases based on the testimony of former AGMI director Harutyun Marutyan—accused Raymon Gevorgyan, the Board’s chairman appointed by Pashinyan, of theft.
Demoyan called Nikol Pashinyan’s efforts to equalize the ideas “Western Azerbaijan” and “Western Armenia” nonsense from the viewpoint of history. However, Demoyan called it a tragedy that the director of the History Institute of the National Academy of Science of the Republic of Armenia (NAS RA) commented on this nonsense.
“He is engaged in crude agent activity. He speaks about Western Armenia only because we are making claims against Turkey. By drawing such comparisons, Pashinyan casts doubt on the fact of the Genocide and seeks to erase the fact that Armenians were deprived of their homeland,” said Hayk Demoyan.
He recounted a scandalous case involving historical research conducted by scholars Arsen Hakobyan and Lusine Kharatyan under a European grant program. The book that resulted from this research was endorsed by the Institute of Ethnography and Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. According to Demoyan, the research has since been exploited by Azerbaijani propaganda to support claims that the current territory of the Republic of Armenia constitutes so-called “Western Azerbaijan.” Demoyan pointed out that Lusine Kharatyan is closely tied to Nikol Pashinyan: she is the daughter of the notoriously controversial ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan, the sister of Pashinyan’s former adviser Arsen Kharatyan, and the wife of Karapet Badalyan, a judge of the Anti-Corruption Court.
According to Demoyan, everyone who supported Pashinyan, committed high treason.
In an interview with 168.am on April 5, 2025, Hayk Demoyan recalled an incident involving the current Foreign Minister of Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan, and the theft of rare books from the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute:
“Let’s talk about another ‘hero’—Ararat Mirzoyan. In 2004, I wasn’t yet the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, nor was I working there. At that time, Ararat Mirzoyan and Vladimir Vardanyan were post-graduate students. During renovation work at the museum, 19 highly valuable pieces of ancient literature went missing. When asked why no criminal case was launched, the former director explained they didn’t want to stir up a scandal and said the theft had been carried out by post-graduate students. Then he named them.”
In this context, a rather logical question arises, Demoyan noted: why did the former director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute never publicly express outrage that during Serzh Sargsyan’s ten-year presidency—from 2008 to 2018—the criminal case was never brought to court and the perpetrators were never held accountable? Given that Ararat Mirzoyan was reportedly a Turkish agent (according to Mikayel Minasyan), and allegedly recruited by Armenia’s National Security Service back in November 2007, perhaps the theft of such rare and valuable books aligned with Serzh Sargsyan’s policy of normalizing relations with Turkey under the framework of the so-called “football diplomacy.”
