The Arrests
Per Hetq.am 5 June reporting, the campaign officials handling Strong Armenia's operations in Yerevan's Ajapnyak administrative district were arrested on vote-buying charges. The arrests are part of the same criminal proceeding under which Arman Sahakyan -- arrested earlier the same day -- was remanded by court for two months. The Prosecutor's Office is treating the arrests as a single vote-buying operation.
Ajapnyak is one of Yerevan's twelve administrative districts. The district-level campaign apparatus in each Yerevan district is responsible for ground-game operations: door-knocking, observer placement, polling-station coordination, and last-week supporter mobilization. Removing the Ajapnyak-district Strong Armenia team 48 hours before the vote degrades the coalition's capacity in that district specifically and signals to other districts what the prosecutorial risk profile looks like.
Vote-Buying as a Charge
Vote-buying allegations in Armenian electoral law cover the offering of money, gifts, or other inducements in exchange for ballots. They are charged most often in pre-election windows and are characteristically asymmetric in enforcement: the documentary evidence required is significant, the procedural decision to prosecute is discretionary, and the prosecutorial selection of which campaign's vote-buying to charge produces electoral consequences regardless of the underlying conduct.
OWL's 28 May coverage of the opposition's schools-and-kindergartens prosecutorial complaint documented the reciprocal pattern: the opposition filed a formal complaint with the Prosecutor's Office over Civil Contract's use of state educational buildings as campaign rally venues. The Prosecutor's Office moved decisively on the Strong Armenia vote-buying matter; it has not, on the public record, moved with comparable speed on the opposition's reciprocal complaint.
The 13-Cases / 40-Suspects Wave
Hetq's 4-5 June reporting documents that prosecutors sent 13 criminal proceedings covering 40 persons to court on election-crime charges in the final week. The Ajapnyak arrests are part of that wave. The Investigative Committee has separately publicly charged 37 persons with money-laundering offences in the same week. The combined volume of election-period criminal action in the final 48 hours is at a multi-year high for Armenia.
The political function of the wave is to dominate the closing-week news cycle, fragment opposition messaging, and supply the ruling party's campaign narrative with continuous law-and-order content. Whether the underlying cases produce convictions on the merits is a question for the post-election court calendar; the political utility of the prosecutorial wave is being captured in real time, before the vote.
The Asymmetry
Voters considering the 7 June ballot are observing the asymmetry directly. Strong Armenia's district officials are arrested on vote-buying allegations; Civil Contract's schools-and-kindergartens rally use sits without prosecutorial action. The Brusov University case from 2009-2016 produces seven simultaneous arrest decisions in election week; the cases against currently-serving Civil Contract figures (the Konjoryan Arinj house, the Sukiasyan gold-laundering pipeline, the ANIF asset stripping) sit in various states of procedural inactivity.
Voters reading this asymmetry as evidence of selective justice will be reinforced in that reading by the Ajapnyak arrests. Voters reading it as legitimate enforcement against vote-buying will be reinforced in that reading too. The 7 June ballot is, among other things, a referendum on which reading the electorate accepts.
Sources: Hetq.am, 5 June 2026 (Strong Armenia Ajapnyak arrests) · Hetq.am, 5 June 2026 (Sahakyan remand) · OWL, 30 May 2026 (schools/kindergartens complaint)