Ashot Gevorkovich Egiazaryan (Russian: Ашот Геворкович Егиазарян) is a Russian politician and businessman. He is a Deputy of the State Duma of Russia. Egiazaryan was born on July 24, 1965 in Moscow. In 1988, he graduated from the Economics Faculty of Moscow State University with a Ph.D. degree in economics, and began a career in banking. He has been a member of the State Duma since 1999 and belongs to the parliamentary grouping of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) although he is not a member of the party itself.
In the 1980s, he founded a computer trading company.
In 1993, Egiazaryan established and became the Chairman of the Moscow National Bank (MNB). In 1995 the bank became one of the biggest banks in Russia, housing accounts of the Administration of Moscow region, The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Russian State Arms Export Company, The Russian Space Agency and the General Prosecutor’s Office were placed in the bank. The bank later went bankrupt.
In 1996 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the board of directors of “Unikombank” JSCB. Egiazaryan held this position in the bank from June 1996 to May 1998. Later he was in charge of developing Prof-Media, a media holding which owns numerous TV stations and other media assets in Russia. In 1998 Egiazaryan went into politics and took up a position as a consultant to the first deputy chairman of Russian government.
In 1999 he became a member of the State Duma and deputy chairman of the Committee on Budget and Taxes. Since December 2007, Egiazaryan has been a State Duma deputy. In 2010, Egiazaryan has been stripped off his parliamentary immunity by the Duma per Russian Prosecutor General's request due to grand larceny charges. Egiazaryan is residing in the US.
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Ashot Egiazaryan is currently involved in a legal dispute over the Moskva Hotel in the center of Moscow. In September 2010, Egiazaryan and his associates filed a claim in Cyprus court complaining that a group of Russian businessmen and politicians, including former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, his wife Elena Baturina, Russian senator and businessman Suleyman Kerimov and Russian businessman Arkady Rotenberg, conspired to take over Egiazaryan’s share in the multi-billion dollar Moskva Hotel project.[1] According to court documents, Egiazaryan claims that he was forced to sign over his right to a 25% stake in the Moskva Hotel project to Kerimov in 2009, losing his initial $253 million and was threatened with criminal prosecution if he did not agree to do so.[2]
On 15 September 2010 following Egiazaryan's claim, the Nicosia District Court in Cyprus imposed a freezing order on Suleyman Kerimov’s shares in a number of Cyprus-based companies through which he owns stakes in large Russian companies Uralkali and Polyus Gold. On 13 September 2010, Yegiazaryan also filed claims amounting to $2 billion in the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA).[3] On Feb. 15, 2011, the district court of Nicosia in Cyprus lifted the injunction freezing part of Kerimov’s assets, saying that the plaintiffs in the case had failed to provide sufficient grounds for maintaining an interim freezing order. This was not a ruling on the merits of the case and his lawyers said they would challenge the court's decision. [4]
Related to this conflict, the Russian Investigative Committee has indicted Egiazaryan in absentia for large-scale fraud and an international warrant for is arrest was issued in December 2010.[5]
In 2010, Centurion Group owner and chairman Vitaly Smagin filed a lawsuit against Egiazaryan, accusing him of appropriating Smagin’s stake in the Europark shopping mall in western Moscow. Smagin has asked the authorities to open a criminal investigation against Egiazaryan, make him return Smagin’s 20 percent stake in Europark, and pay $50 million in damages. In turn, Egiazaryan has denied these charges and sued Smagin for libel and false denunciation.[6]
In October 2010 the State Duma’s Credentials and Ethics Commission recommended stripping Egiazaryan of parliamentary immunity at the request of the Investigative Committee, which wants to charge him with fraud, related to accusations that he swindled $87 million during the reconstruction of the Hotel Moskva, which is located across the street from the Duma.[7] In an official vote on the matter on October 22, 2010, the Duma supported the criminal investigation of alleged fraud committed by Egiazaryan, with 382 deputies voting for the case against Yegiazaryan, 40 against the case and two abstaining.[8]
On November 3, 2010, the State Duma followed through with a request by Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and officially stripped Egiazaryan of his immunity. A total of 352 lawmakers of the Duma voted in favour. Thirty-nine deputies, all members of the Liberal Democratic Party, were against and five abstained from the vote. [9]
Five days later, on November 8, 2010, investigators raided the offices of Egiazaryan, in connection with the allegations of fraud against him. According to Egiazaryan’s lawyer Dmitri Baranikov, the searches were conducted in the business center Dayev Plaza and took over five hours. Nothing has yet been reported on the results of this search.[10] In a separate incident the same month, also connected to the allegations of fraud, investigators conducted search and seizures at Egiazaryan’s residences in Moscow. The search was extended to the offices of the Europark shopping mall, in which Egiazaryan owns a stake.[11]
On December 17 the Russian Authorities seized 3 land plots belonging to Egiazaryan.[12] One plot is located in Barvikha, and the other two in Zhukovka. Egiazaryan’s Duma office also was searched, with investigators seizing paperwork related to the case against him. As a result of these investigations, the lower house of parliament in Russia gave approval on March 9 for Egiazaryan’s arrest on charges of large-scale fraud. RiaNovosti, Mar. 9, 2011.