Armenia’s Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) has revoked the operating license of Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the company that has long dominated electricity distribution and sales in the country and serves more than a million customers. ENA, controlled by Tashir Capital and tied to political prisoner Samvel Karapetyan, was acquired by his Tashir Group in 2015 after years of heavy debt, mismanagement, and mass protests over electricity tariffs, under a government approved plan to modernize the grid and stabilize prices. Today, that same asset has been stripped away through a rushed and overtly political procedure led by interim ENA manager and Civil Contract member Romanos Petrosyan. The decision was adopted in only three days, despite a formal objection from PSRC member Ara Nranyan. Control of the grid is being handed to an interim administration aligned with Pashinyan.

PSRC head Mesrop Mesropyan has openly described the next steps. In his words, the state has only revoked ENA’s license, and this decision must be followed by further processes. Over the next three months, the government plans to negotiate with the owner or with ENA’s board of directors over the transfer of property rights. If no agreement is reached within those three months, the state, according to Mesropyan, can then invoke an overriding public interest and take the property. On paper, that concept is meant to be a rare and exceptional tool, reserved for genuine emergencies and backed by strict safeguards. Used here, against a politically targeted owner after a three day process, it looks far less like regulation and far more like a pre announced confiscation.

The political context removes any remaining ambiguity. The move against ENA came directly after Karapetyan’s public defense of the Armenian Apostolic Church and his criticism of Nikol. Shortly thereafter, Karapetyan was arrested. Petrosyan was placed at the head of ENA in July 2025, immediately following that arrest. His role was not to stabilize the energy sector, but to pull ENA out of Karapetyan’s hands as punishment.

Karapetyan has now spent more than five months in detention on charges that are rooted in his speech. His call for unity and accountability in defense of the Church has been rebranded by the authorities as an attempt to seize power. The Court of Appeals has already ruled that his initial detention was unlawful. Rather than accept that judgment, the authorities have kept him behind bars through a chain of new decisions and extensions. The message is clear: once you become politically inconvenient, court rulings do not protect you.

The response has moved beyond Armenia’s borders. Karapetyan’s family and affiliated entities have filed an investment claim accusing the state of politically motivated expropriation. On 22 July 2025, an Emergency Arbitrator of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce ordered Armenia to halt further steps toward taking ENA. Instead of treating this as a binding signal that the state had gone too far, the Justice Minister publicly indicated that the government may refuse to comply. That is not only a snub to one arbitral decision. It is a signal to every serious investor that contracts, licenses, and international dispute resolution mechanisms mean little when they collide with the current leadership’s political priorities.

All of this is happening in a critical sector. ENA is not a marginal company. It is the backbone of the country’s electricity distribution system and a key employer. Politicizing its ownership and management in this way injects uncertainty directly into the heart of the energy system. It raises questions about tariff policy, investment in infrastructure, and long term reliability. It also sets a template for how other strategic assets can be seized from unwanted owners under the cover of public interest and hastily engineered regulatory action.

Taken together, these elements form a single pattern: a lightning fast license revocation against the dominant grid operator, installation of loyalists to manage the transition, an explicit threat to take the company’s assets if talks fail, open defiance of an emergency arbitration order, and the continued imprisonment of the company’s ultimate owner even after a court has found his initial detention unlawful. Officially, this is packaged as regulatory enforcement and the restoration of order in the energy sector. In reality, it is widely understood as political retaliation and economic seizure.

The precedent is disastrous. Any major investor who falls out with the authorities now knows what to expect: criminal prosecution tied to speech, a coordinated regulatory assault on their business, and the risk of outright confiscation dressed up as overriding public interest. This is not a technical dispute over a license. It is another step in the erosion of the rule of law in Armenia and a direct warning to anyone who still believes that courts, contracts, and international agreements can restrain the state when power is at stake.