PREVIEW: Taron Margaryan with Sam Martirosyan

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to No Gods, No Mayors.

It is Riley.

I am sort of like your mayor emeritus for this evening, but

I've given a celebrity shot

to my mayoring because for the first time,

it is producer Sam joining us to talk about Taryn Margarian.

Sam, welcome to this side of the microphone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's nice to be here.

To be honest, I'm a little bit nervous

because this is my first time.

It's like my mayorship debut.

So being a mayor is like a huge responsibility.

And so naturally, I'm a little bit worried.

Don't worry.

If we can do it.

Yeah.

If we can do it.

And also, if we can do it, Malfo, if several mayors we've covered can do it.

If William Lantigua can do it.

Yeah.

You know, I had someone reach out to me and ask whether they wanted to pull strings to get William Lantigua on the show.

And I was like, that's the worst idea I've ever heard.

I kind of want to do it.

Shit, maybe.

Shit, maybe.

Yeah, let's invite him next time.

And also, a big congratulations to Ms.

What is it?

Yeah, the non-title attached.

Yeah,

so you can't congratulate me.

Ms.

Humbergraduate.

yeah how about this how about this uh your batman villain name diploma millie

very good very good all of gotham will matriculate tonight batman you'll never get away with this diploma millie

you've already devalued the bas of everyone in gotham city now you're coming for master's degrees why batman i'm going to inflate all of the grades I'm going to inflate all the grades across the board.

Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mortar board.

Yeah, so it, what it is, is I dropped out of university to become a podcaster, which is very much like running away to join the circus.

And so now at long last, at the age of 34, having gone back, I am now a, well, I assume I'm going to be.

I got the thesis.

I got the dissertation in for it.

And then I'm hoping pretty soon to be a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology.

So

she finally did it.

She made the achievement that like 50% of the people in the country do.

This is the plot of the film has already been kissed.

And the graduate, I imagine.

I've never seen it.

But, like, also the thing is, I posted about this on Blue Sky.

And the problem with Blue Sky is that it's very heavily weighted towards academics.

Like, it's all like, you know, PhDs who are like, Twitter is, you know, far too Nazi for me now.

I'm going to go and move and post under my real name on Blue Sky.

And so I posted on Blue Sky.

Hey, I, you know, I got my diss, I got my dissertation in and immediately got back this wave of extremely credentialed friends being like, oh, so is it like Dr.

Kelly now?

And I'm like, no, no, it is not.

Get back to me in a few years.

It's Bachelorette, Kelly, actually.

You will be selecting

from you'll be giving out roses in a mansion.

Anyway, so look, we also have some municipal roundups, but we're not going to be able to get to those until the next episode because, my God,

are there a lot of chapters in the sort of awful and upsetting life of Darren Hargarion?

And I will now hand over to

celebrity mayor Sam to tell us a little bit about this extremely uncolorful but incredibly shitty character.

Yeah, thank you.

But before I start, I just want to say that English is not my first, is not my native language.

I have hosted many podcast episodes in Armenian, but never in English.

So please don't judge me too harshly.

I was planning to do exactly that and judge her extremely harshly.

No, listen, It's fine.

If you need to flex, just like switch back to Armenian, see how good my Armenian is.

Yeah, I might just do that.

Yeah.

So I think you're allowed to do whatever you want after we 45 times an episode just yell on Mike Sam, fix it.

And then

so I think you're allowed to do and say whatever you'd like for the next hour or so.

Nearly every episode has me talking about like someone I know as an inside joke and saying, you obviously have to cut all of them.

Yeah, I do a lot of cutting.

No, not a lot, but yeah, I do.

So, yeah, I believe today is kind of a special episode because we're finally leaving the Anglosphere behind and landing straight in the heart of Armenia, Yerevan, which is where I live.

But to be clear, I'm currently not in Yerevan because I have been flown into an unknown basement of mayor gathering somewhere that I don't know and y'all don't know and and this is where we record our episodes from this is like a known fact this is this is like just as well though because it gives you the kind of like distance from Yerevan that you can say things about Taran Margarian safely yes exactly it's kick there's like kickproof walls yeah

you can say things about Taryn Margarian and he won't um expropriate you and then sell you to his godson at a discount

yeah

so yeah let's start.

Instead of walking us through his like entire career from the beginning, I just want to start strong.

And as we like to say on this podcast, in an episode when he's already deeply embattled,

which is recent stuff.

So on March 27 of this year, Armenia's prosecutor general appeared before the parliament because She had a serious request.

She wanted to strip former Jervan Mayer and currently an MP, Taran Markarian, of his parliamentary immunity and launch criminal proceedings against him.

So the motion passed with 67 votes in favor.

And two opposition groups named Armenia and I Have Honor Alliance, of which Taran Markaran is now a member of, just boycotted the vote.

You gotta try and be popular at work because you never know when they're gonna have to vote on whether or not you still have like diplomatic immunity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also like that the defending Tarrad Markarian block is I have honor, like the not a criminal block.

Yes, we have honor.

We're very honorable.

The don't worry about us block.

We're just normal parliamentarians.

Yeah, the upstanding citizens brigade.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it's fucked.

Upstanding citizens, if to join the I Have Honor Alliance, you actually end up just like paying a lot and it's kind of a pyramid scheme.

So the prosecutor's request was basically 60 pages long and I've read all of that and there are some like serious allegations in it.

And Taron is now accused of orchestrating illegal land deals involving two schools and a kindergarten along with charges of money laundering.

So according to investigation, this wasn't like a one-time incident.

Between 2011 and 2015, while he was serving as deputy mayor and then mayor, he allegedly, and I'm going to use this word allegedly a lot,

led a scheme to illegally seize and privatize land from schools using Greek surveys and fake documents.

For example, about 4,000 square meters were carved out of Yerevan Special School number 16.

Just coming to work in the school and being like, I remember us having more classrooms than this.

There's guys living in them now.

They're luxury apartments.

It's very odd.

Literally, yeah.

Yeah, I don't remember us having a big lobby with a doorman.

Maybe they've upgraded the school, hopefully.

How come all these

classrooms have kitchens and bathrooms in them?

Yeah, so originally the school territory campus was 13,000 square meters, and the land was then quietly auctioned off at below market prices.

to none other than Mark Aran's godson and the husband of the school's director.

There is also a similar scheme targeting kindergarten number 64.

And this time they stripped off 2,000 square meters from its grounds in two separate transactions.

And the land ended up in Markarian's friends and family members' hands.

Like taking land from a baby.

Yes.

Easier in many ways than candy.

Well, it's pretty, taking land from the baby is easy because a baby is easy to move.

So once you move the baby off the land, then the land's all yours.

And the baby knows the value of candy.

It doesn't necessarily know the the value of land that's kind of an abstract thing and like most babies wouldn't have the wherewithal to like file an injunction stopping you taking the land yeah yeah it's true and also also this uh special school is a school for kids with special needs and yeah taan marken worked closely with his friend arman sahakian

who led the state property management department and chaired Yerevan's public school board.

So he too is accused of really serious crimes of like taking freeing up excess land, quote unquote.

It's just like corrupt on both sides.

I mean, these do sound like evil bastards.

They are, allegedly.

Yeah, allegedly.

Allegedly evil bastards.

Yeah, so because of that, measures like house arrests and travel bans have been imposed.

And if convicted, Saha Kyan and his network could face serious prison time and fines.

And that's not all.

This is not even like the main criminal proceedings against Aaron Markan.

He's also facing like a separate separate lawsuit tied to a suspiciously large real estate portfolio that he has built during his time.

You're not even like embattled at that point.

You're in multiple battles.

You're in like you're encampaigned or something.

Yes.

I was going to say he's sort of like in a he's sort of in a Punic war

just on multiple fronts at the same time.

They're going to raise insult the land where his like various mansions have been built throughout like Avon and the surrounding area.

Yeah,

his district is called Avan.

And so, yeah, the prosecutors basically want to confiscate multiple properties, including several mansions, a summer house, an apartment building, different pieces of land in different parts of the country, allegedly acquired through illicit means.

Of course, also luxury vehicles.