The family of billionaire Ruben Vardanyan reported that on April 5 he began a hunger strike in an Azerbaijani pre-trial detention center.
The Azerbaijani border service detained Vardanyan, who was the minister of state (head of government) of Nagorno-Karabakh, in September 2023 on Checkpoint in the Lachin corridor.
Then, after the next stage of active hostilities, the unrecognized republic capitulated. Vardanyan tried to evacuate to Armenia from Karabakh along with other residents. Then other leaders of Karabakh were also detained.
55-year-old Vardanyan was charged with
The businessman, as his relatives write, demanded “the immediate and unconditional release of himself and other Armenian prisoners illegally held in Baku.” Since the beginning of the hunger strike, Vardanyan has been prohibited from making telephone calls with his family; they only learned about the hunger strike today.
“The trial, originally scheduled for January, was unnecessarily postponed until May <…> The case of Ruben Vardanyan was separated from the cases of the other seven political prisoners,” the relatives added.
The businessman was the founder of the investment company Troika Dialog, which Sberbank bought in 2011. In 2021, Forbes estimated his fortune at $1 billion.
In September 2022, Vardanyan renounced Russian citizenship, transferred his Russian assets to a family foundation and left for Nagorno-Karabakh. He was Minister of State there from November 2022 to February 2023. The Azerbaijani authorities put forward his resignation among the conditions for ending the blockade of the Lachin corridor.
As the OCCRP investigative project found out, Troika Dialog, before being sold to Sberbank in 2012, created a system of at least 76 offshore companies through which money was transferred to influential people in Russia, including Vladimir Putin's friend Sergei Roldugin, as well as companies involved in criminal cases.