Ministry of Justice of Armenia explains reasons for refusal to  register party of former Defense Minister 

ArmInfo.The Ministry of Justice of Armenia explained the reasons for the refusal to register the 

All-Armenian Front party recently established by former Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia Arshak Karapetyan.

"The application for state registration of the new formed party, 

submitted to the Agency of the State Register of Legal Entities on 

April 19, 2024, was returned by the agency on May 16, 2024 on the 

basis of non-compliance with the requirements established by the 

constitutional law "On parties", as well as the law "On state 

registration of legal entities, designated divisions, institutions 

and individual entrepreneurs", therefore, on the substantive grounds 

provided for by the law on state registration of the party", the 

department's explanation reads.

In particular, according to the law, the decision to establish a 

party is considered adopted if the majority of participants in the 

founding congress of the party, but not less than 300 founders, vote 

for this decision. The All-Armenian Front movement in the minutes of 

the founding congress of April 5, attached to the application, did 

not provide information about the participation of 300 founders. 

Consequently, the requirement of this norm was violated.

"According to the Civil Code, the location of a legal entity and the 

location of its permanent body must be identical. The applicant 

indicated in the certificate submitted by him to the agency of the 

state register of legal entities, and in the party charter, instead 

of the same address, different addresses, which violated the 

specified requirement of the law. Moreover, the home address of the 

party's General Secretary Hovhannes Shahinyan was indicated as the 

location of the legal entity," the Ministry of Justice noted.  At the 

same time, according to the law, for the purpose of state 

registration, the party, if any, submits information about the 

territorial divisions of the party to the authorized state body. The 

applicant party provided for territorial divisions in its charter, 

but at the time of filing the application for state registration it 

did not provide the information required by law about its territorial 

divisions, which violated the requirement of this norm.

In addition to these violations, there were a number of other 

substantive shortcomings in the submitted documents, for example, the 

constitutional law "On Parties" clearly establishes the wording that 

is mandatory to be indicated in the charter, while the applicant did 

not include a number of mandatory definitions in its charter.

"Based on the rules below, it is obvious that the refusal of the 

Agency of the State Register of Legal Entities to register a party 

has no grounds other than legal reasons," the message says, obviously 

meaning "the abovementiond" and not "the ones below".

On March 6 of this year, Former Minister of Defense of the Republic 

of Armenia Arshak Karapetyan (was appointed Minister of Defense on 

August 2, 2021, and on November 15 of the same year he was relieved 

of his post) decided to reformat the All-Armenian Front movement into 

a party. The ex-minister justified his decision by the growing 

interest of the Armenian public in the movement he initiated, the 

readiness to engage in active political struggle and the desire to 

come to power through party struggle. The founding congress of the 

All-Armenian Front party took place in early April 2024. The party 

leader himself, Arshak Karapetyan, participated in it remotely. 

According to media reports, he is now in Russia.

On March 12 this year, at a press conference, Prime Minister Nikol 

Pashinyan said: "Arshak Karapetyan is the Minister of Defense who has 

served the shortest term. He was the first deputy chief of the 

General Staff, when the events of May 2021 took place, then he was 

the Minister of Defense, when the events of November 2021 took place. 

I decided to dismiss him, on the morning of November 14, 2021, when 

he reported to me that everything was calm along the border, while at 

the time of his report, Azerbaijani troops had invaded the territory 

of the Republic of Armenia in a number of sections of our border and 

even took positions. Being the Minister of Defense, he either did not 

know about this, or or being aware of it, did not report it; in such 

circumstances I will not tolerate anyone".