Organized Crime and Coruption Project

Baghdasaryan, who is also president of the Armenia non-governmental organization, “Investigative Journalists” and a frequent contributor to OCCRP, is one of several Armenian journalists who have endured physical abuse for their work in recent years. In November 2008 he was attacked as he left his office by three men and wound up in the hospital after being hit in the head with a stone.

In remarks at an embassy award ceremony, Baghdasaryan said he would have preferred not to win an honor that meant: “people are being persecuted and arrested in your own country merely for their political convictions (and)…that 30 percent of children are malnourished and go to bed hungry.”

In addition to malnutrition, which he sees as a untended root cause for much misery in his country, the investigative reporter decried environmental degradation and poor education in Armenia during his speech. Real leaders, he said, could resolve some of these problems “in an hour with the stroke of a pen” if they had the will to do so.