The ACC has also found and recovered the bulk of the sum which the Investigative Committee temporarily confiscated from criminal suspects a year ago.
It was stolen on May 20 from a safe located on the sixth floor of a building in the city center housing an Investigative Committee division that deals with smuggling and other economic crimes.
In a video aired by Armenian Public Television on Monday evening, the ACC confirmed reports that an intruder entered the building in the afternoon, emptied the safe and escaped the following morning. It said it arrested the man, identified as Edgar Grigorian, and found over 98 percent of the stolen money stashed in multiple locations at the weekend.
According to the ACC, the unprecedented theft was organized by Gor Tadevosian, the acting head of an Investigative Committee division. Tadevosian was arrested on May 22. Both men have reportedly confessed to the crime which critics say highlighted the poor state of affairs within Armenia’s state apparatus.
Nina Karapetiants, a civil rights activist, on Tuesday called the theft “the disgrace of the century,” wondering how the alleged thief, who wore a rubber face mask, managed to pass through security check at the entrance to the building and spend 16 hours inside it.
“The guy sat in the hallway, in an armchair, from 4:40 or 4:30 until the end of the workday, and then he disappeared somewhere in that area, and it never occurred to anyone to go, look, see if there are any unauthorized people in the area or not,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “It never occurred to anyone to stop the person leaving the building early in the morning, at 8:30 a.m., and ask him, ‘Who are you?’”
Karapetian speculated that either the suspect also had other accomplices among law-enforcement officials or “we are dealing with total ineptness” within the Investigative Committee. She also wondered why investigators kept the large amount of cash in their office for so long.
Pastinfo.am reported late last week that somebody already tried to steal the money last December. The ACC did not confirm or deny this.