The sum was reportedly confiscated from criminal suspects last year and for months kept in a safe on the sixth floor of the building housing a committee division that deals with smuggling and other economic crimes.
Citing unnamed sources, Pastinfo.am reported that investigators believe an unknown intruder used a false or stolen Investigative Committee ID to enter the building on Tuesday afternoon, empty the safe and escape the following morning.
“He stayed in the building for about 16 hours and took his time stealing the money,” the publication wrote in disbelief.
The unprecedented theft is being investigated by another law-enforcement body, the Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC). The ACC claimed to be carrying out “large-scale operational-investigative and evidentiary actions” when it announced the arrest late on Thursday.
News reports said on Friday that the arrested suspect, not identified by the ACC, is Gor Tadevosian, the acting head of an Investigative Committee division. It was not clear what exactly he is suspected or accused of.
The investigators appear to have not yet identified the thief or found the cash stolen from the building located in downtown Yerevan and guarded by a private security firm.
It is not clear why the Investigative Committee did not keep the money in a safer location. According to Pastinfo.am, somebody had already tried to steal it last December.
Varazdat Harutiunian, a lawyer critical of the Armenian government, said the brazen theft highlighted the “messy” state of affairs within the country’s state apparatus.
“This is the situation in all areas of the organization of state life,” Harutiunian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.