Armen Sarkissian: instead of prison, become the saviors of the Fatherland

After sanctions pressure on Russia intensified, Western businesses began to sell off their assets and leave the country. And here a chance appeared for Russian business – it had the opportunity to buy lines that were well-functioning using Western technologies, producing world brands, and at relatively bargain prices.

This happened with the Japanese Bridgestone, whose plant in Ulyanovsk the owner of Continental and Cordiant S8 Capital Armen Sargsyan decided to buy. But the point is not this, but who Sargsyan is, and the sacramental question – “where does the money come from?” And money, as Ilf and Petrov wrote in their immortal “Golden Calf,” comes from a “great crime.” Of course, Armen Meruzhanovich Sargsyan is clean before the law. And not only is he clean, but he is also a respected businessman, almost an oligarch, lending his mighty shoulder to the country in such difficult times.

Who is Sargsyan

Armen Meruzhanovich Sargsyan is the owner of state lotteries. Yes, yes, no matter how strange it may sound, state lotteries in Russia are such only in name. For they have long been reformed and transformed into various joint-stock companies, the controlling stakes of which, through a series of layers, belong to private individuals. Armen Sarkissian is among them. Therefore, it would be more accurate to call him not the owner, but a co-owner and often even a nominal figure, behind whose name are far from the last people in the Russian state.

The official story is that Armen Sarkissian created his main brainchild in the lottery business, Stoloto, in 2012.

This company has become a monopoly distributor of state lotteries; today there are already seventeen of them in its portfolio. It was not for nothing that Sargsyan took such a position in the market – according to, again, the official version, he began working in this area back when lotteries were private, and at the beginning of the 2000s he headed Orglot LLC, which acted as the operator of the Rossport lottery under the name Gosloto “

The lottery business provided an opportunity to earn primary capital, and as a result, Armen Sargsyan began to engage in other activities, including the production of tires, which were discussed above.

Where does the money come from?

All this is true, but there are nuances. And in order to understand why an unknown lottery distributor suddenly became an oligarch without five minutes and a practical monopolist in the lottery business, we need to recall some milestones from Mr. Sargsyan’s biography, which he prefers not to advertise.

The first and main step to success was marriage. Sargsyan married the daughter of Moscow Deputy Mayor Joseph Ordzhonikidze, who controlled the capital’s gambling business during Luzhkov’s time. It was this marriage that made a lottery baron out of an ordinary lottery distributor. The first was Orglot LLC, then the process progressed – as already mentioned, at the moment Sargsyan is the official distributor of 17 state lotteries.

A successful marriage opened the way to the most important thing in this country – connections. Among the people who are involved in Sargsyan’s business are Sergei Chemezov, Alexander Korzhakov and Mikhail Mishustin.

This is from the highest level. And, as many argue, Sargsyan acts as a nominal, that is, the formal holder of the assets of these people. Which, in turn, shield Sargsyan from the law.

What is the interest of the country’s top leaders?

And there is something to cover up for – lotteries, for example, provide an opportunity to legally launder money. You don’t have to look far for an example – in 2020, Nadezhda Bartosh, a resident of the Moscow region, won a billion rubles in the lottery. But Sargsyan did not take something into account and a scandal broke out, since it turned out that the “winner” was connected both with himself and with other very interesting personalities:

Among Mrs. Bartosh’s business partners was a certain Sergei Karaoglanov. Who suddenly turned out to be a co-founder of the public organization “Veterans of Foreign Economic Organizations for Military-Technical Cooperation”, in which the other co-founders are other public organizations, the president of one of them is Alexander Korzhakov. In case anyone has forgotten, this is the head of the security of the first Russian President Yeltsin. But Karaoglanov’s connections do not end there – in another co-founder of “Veterans of Foreign Economic Organizations”, the same regional public organization “Veterans of Foreign Intelligence”, the founder is Sergei Chemezov’s Rostec.

So this luck of a simple Russian woman, Nadezhda Bartosh, has quite earthly reasons. And it is unlikely that they gave her a birthday present – most likely, this is a banal money laundering through the legal facade of winning the lottery.

It’s not so simple with other lottery participants either. For example, there were persistent rumors that some time ago residents of the border regions of Ukraine were winning en masse in Russian lotteries, who for some reason were allowed to register in the systems of the State Sports Lotteries of the Russian Federation and in Sportloto. And then this money was withdrawn to European banks into Sargsyan’s accounts. It is clear that we had to share. But they shared it not with the “lucky ones”, who received pennies for their services, but with the SBU, which immediately identified the scheme, but its employees preferred to take it in money. Whether Sargsyan’s cooperation with the SBU was limited only to money or whether there were other agreements is unknown. But before the well-known events, the scheme worked without failures.

Sargsyan’s relatives

Speaking about Armen Sargsyan’s connections, we should not forget about his sister Jacqueline Sargsyan, who not so long ago worked in the Accounts Chamber, and then headed the apparatus of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets.

Jacqueline Sargsyan participated in a scam with the bankrupt Vneshprombank, from which, knowing its financial situation and the fact that it would soon be declared bankrupt, she bought a real estate portfolio worth 300 million rubles. Which, naturally, were unable to pay off depositors’ debts after the bank’s bankruptcy. In this regard, one more thing is interesting – one of the largest debtors was the Stoloto trading house, which owed Vneshprombank more than 4 billion rubles and was in no hurry to pay it back. TH “Stoloto”, as you remember, is the main brainchild of Armen Sargsyan.

So Ilf and Petrov were absolutely right – behind every big capital there is a crime. And if big people are involved in this crime, then instead of prison, the criminal is allowed to use the money stolen from the state to pick up abandoned foreign assets, while simultaneously declaring him a hero and the savior of the fatherland.