A court has ordered the arrest of Hayk Avagyan, a parliamentary candidate from the Strong Armenia alliance, and authorities have launched a search to determine his whereabouts.

According to Armenia’s Investigative Committee, the measure was imposed as part of a criminal investigation into allegations of material inducement of voters during the election campaign and money laundering on an especially large scale, 1lurer.am reported.

The committee said that during the preliminary investigation conducted by the Department for General and Electoral Crimes within the Main Directorate for Particularly Important Cases, public criminal prosecution was initiated against six parliamentary candidates from the Strong Armenia alliance.

The candidates were charged under Part 2 of Article 46-236 and Point 3 of Part 3 of Article 296 of the Criminal Code.

Detention orders were issued for the suspects, and their execution was assigned to the police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

During the investigation, two of the candidates were located, and pretrial detention was imposed as a preventive measure.

The pretrial investigation is continuing.

According to preliminary election results, votes were distributed as follows: Civil Contract — 49.825 percent, Strong Armenia — 23.281 percent, Armenia Alliance — 9.934 percent, and Prosperous Armenia — 3.996 percent. Updated figures indicate that Prosperous Armenia has not crossed the 4 percent threshold required for parties and has requested recounts at several polling stations.