Fake Police Kidnap Foreigners in Yerevan, Extort Over ֏14M

The preliminary investigation of a criminal proceeding initiated on the occasion of the kidnapping of foreign citizens has been completed in the RA Investigative Committee. The IC reports that during the preliminary investigation, apparent factual data were obtained that individuals posing as police officers entered the apartment of a foreign citizen, took a powder-like substance from the table, and announced the discovery of drugs.

As a result, the individuals posing as police officers, under the pretext of taking the foreigner and his friend to the police station, with mercenary motives and the intention of demanding money later, put them in a car and headed towards the Yerevan-Sevan highway, thus fraudulently kidnapping them. Subsequently, the alleged perpetrators, threatening to publish information damaging to the foreigner's legal interests, demanded money, and upon arriving in Yerevan, the foreign citizen, feeling a real danger to his and his friend's life and health, transferred cryptocurrency equivalent to a particularly large amount of 14,281,560 AMD.

Public criminal prosecution has been initiated against two persons under Article 191, Part 2, Clauses 5 and 8 of the Criminal Code (kidnapping of a person by a group of persons with mercenary motives), Article 207, Part 1 (violation of the inviolability of the home), and Article 258, Part 3, Clause 3 (extortion in particularly large amounts). House arrest, a ban on leaving the country, and bail have been applied to them as preventive measures. The criminal proceeding regarding the two persons, with the indictment, has been sent to the supervising prosecutor with a motion to confirm it and send it to court for substantive examination.