False news: Mikayel Minasyan was detained
Verdict: Fake news
On July 10, several clickbait sites and Facebook pages started spreading information that Mikayel Minasyan, the former Ambassador of Armenia to the Holy See, was detained. A photo showing the alleged detention of Minasyan was also published.
Mikayel Minasyan was not detained
Mikayel Minasyan, a former ambassador and son-in-law of the third president Serzh Sargsyan, is accused of unjust enrichment, presenting false information in a declaration, and legalizing property obtained through crime. He is currently wanted.
The news that Minasyan was detained was first spread on July 9 by the 8rd news YouTube channel. The video was titled "EXCLUSIVE: How they bring Mishik [Mikayel Minasyan] to Armenia," however, there was no word in the entire 9 minutes of the video about Mikael Minasyan's detention.
The video mentions that according to the Armenian media, Minasyan and the head of Robert Kocharyan's office Victor Soghomonyan met at the restaurant of Ararat Park Hyatt Hotel in Moscow.
8rd news also cited Civic.am’s article where the journalist contacted the State Revenue Committee and the RA Police to discover whether the departments had known about Mikayel Minasyan’s whereabouts. The response of the authorities that Civic.am reported was that there is no news regarding the case.
Thus, the news about Minasyan's detention was just clickbait through which 8rd news tried to attract attention and collect views. The content of the video did not refer in any way to the detention of the former ambassador, and the thumbnail was simply an edited picture.
Who owns 8rd news?
The YouTube channel 8rd news exists since May 9, 2018. Ever since then, it has been distributing materials with "sensational" titles, the content of which, as a rule, does not coincide with the headline. The channel only provides a link to the Facebook page Nvideo Only1 for viewer feedback. This Facebook page shares the videos that 8rd news publishes. The page has 18,797 followers. An example of a false information that Nvideo Only1 has published was their post about Armen Charchyan, a member of the Armenia Alliance and the head of the "Izmirlian" Medical Center, who is currently in prison and accused of urging and demanding his employees to participate in the elections.
Nvideo Only1 wrote that Charchyan was "sentenced to life imprisonment", while at the time, the trial of his case had not yet taken place. Only recently the verdict of the Criminal Court of Appeal was published, according to which Charchyan’s request to change the measure of detention was rejected.
The founder of Nvideo Only1 page is a user named Shavarsh Sarukhanyan. This information is on his Facebook page.
Shavarsh Sarukhanyan stated during a Facebook live broadcast that 8rd news belongs to him, adding that it is not the only YouTube channel he owns. Sarukhanyan is one of the supporters of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's government.
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This article was produced in partnership with Media Initiatives Center and is part of Facebook’s Fact-checking Programme. Given the rating, Facebook may impose different restrictions – click here for full information. For information on issuing a correction or to dispute a rating, please see here.
