Armenia’s former Road Police chief Margar Ohanyan has paid an equivalent of about half a million dollars to the state budget to compensate for missing funds that prosecutors say were embezzled during his time in office and for what he was arrested, fired and indicted last year.

At the start of a high-profile trial on Monday Ohanyan still pleaded not guilty of charges of large-scale embezzlement of public funds and abuse of office brought against him by the state. The colonel’s defense attorney said despite not admitting his guilt his client had decided to compensate the loss of public funds – by collecting money from family and friends – because it was a matter of ‘honor and dignity’ for him.

In late August Ohanyan was arrested and subsequently sacked in a criminal investigation into the alleged theft of more than 150 tons of fuel that was allotted to road police cars. The case against him is based on incriminating testimony given by three of his former subordinates also standing trial. Unlike Ohanyan they are not kept in pre-trial detention.

At they first court hearing the former Road Police chief made some remarkable statements, in particular dropping hints that his arrest and prosecution were because of his personal relations with leading officials of the police system.

Ohanyan’s lawyer Mkrtich Vasakyan asked Yerevan’s Kentron and Nork-Marash district court to release his client on bail or under a written agreement not to leave the city while the trial is on. Before judge Mkhitar Papoyan retired to the deliberation room to make the decision, Ohanyan said there was something that he wanted to talk to the judge and the prosecuting attorney Harutyun Harutyunyan. The judge said there was no such practice in court hearings, after which, without giving specific names, Ohanyan said that he had been turned from a witness into a suspect following just one phone call [from a high-ranking official]. He did not specify who the alleged caller was.

“On August 30, I was summoned to the Special Investigation Service, I wrote that there was no such thing, nor could be, for 40 minutes there was nothing, but after one phone call, my status of a witness was changed into that of a suspect and I was arrested. It had its own circumstances that I cannot speak about. I beg you to be clear to your conscience and consider that I have been in prison already for four months and I don’t know why. They simply needed to remove me, arrest me so that they could complete what had been set from the beginning,” he said.

“The matter concerns the police structure where I worked. I should have told you straightforwardly who had come and taken whom before the Special Investigation Service. Don’t wage someone else’s battle. Don’t complete the case of my personal relations with corresponding senior officials here,” added Ohanyan.

Then addressing other defendants Ara Levonyan and Samvel Makhmudyan, Ohanyan said: “I’ll tell [the court] how it was, who was kept for how many hours, who was the mediator, the high-ranking official -- whom I don’t want to name – who got him [Levonyan] to be released from the sixth department at three o’clock in the morning. You think I won’t tell, or you, who came and took you. So what that he is a member of parliament?”

The court eventually rejected the petition from the counsel for the defense about the defendant’s release on bail. Talking to journalists later Ohanyan’s lawyer Vasakyan abstained from commenting on his client’s statements in court. He said that he did not want to elaborate proceeding from defense tactics and that answers to all questions would be provided during the trial.

The next hearing in the trial is due to take place on January 13.