The National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia, carrying out consistent and effective fight in the direction of disclosing, preventing and disrupting the intelligence activity of the special services of foreign states directed against the sovereignty, territorial inviolability and external security of the Republic of Armenia, as a result of operative-search and criminal procedural complex actions, has detected another case of high treason.

In particular:

Sufficient data were obtained by the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia that a citizen of the Republic of Armenia M.S., while working in Istanbul (the Republic of Turkey) during 2015, appearing in the sight of the Azerbaijani intelligence services operating in this country and being recruited by their employees, after returning to Armenia, during 2019 received an offer for a certain amount to obtain information or to transfer information already available to him about the external security, the armed forces, armaments of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh, including the personnel of the army, weapons, ammunition, the number and types of military equipment, military units and their command composition, defensive areas, engineering structures, equipment, and in te last period also about human casualties and etc. Having accepted this proposal, he fulfilled  the tasks entrusted to him through espionage and received sums of money as a reward, thus providing assistance to foreign special services in carrying out hostile activities to the detriment of the territorial inviolability  and external security of the Republic of Armenia.

At the same time, in order to fulfill certain tasks, M.S., continuing to implement his criminal plan, by means of repeated medical examination, eliminated the restrictions that impeded the passage of military service, took measures to be enrolled in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia in order to collect information in a similar way and transfer them to another state to carry out hostile activities, which, however, he did not succeed, since the relevant authorities rejected his application for employment.

In connection with the incident a criminal case has been initiated in the RA National Security Service on the grounds of the elements of crime envisaged by Article 299, Part 1 of the RA Criminal Code, within the framework of which based on direct suspicion of committing high treason M.S. was detained, during which he made confessions.

The National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia is carrying out consistent fight in the direction of preventing, disrupting and disclosing the crimes directed against the fundamentals of the constitutional order and the security of the state.

At the same time, the National Security Service also expects the involvement of broad strata of the general public in this process to report to the authorities the information they have learnt about high treason or espionage for the benefit of the sovereignty, security and territorial inviolability of the Republic of Armenia.

Note: The suspect or accused of an alleged crime is considered innocent as long as his guilt is not proven in a manner prescribed by the Code of Criminal Procedure of RA - by the court decision entered into legal force.