Prosecutor drops criminal probe into Malta Philharmonic conductor Sergey Smbatyan

The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal conductor Maestro Sergey Smbatyan has been freed of a criminal prosecution in his native Armenia, his lawyer has said.

The MPO had suspended Smbatyan following his arrest in Armenia, along with his father Armen Smbatyan, the former ambassador of Armenia to Israel, accused of engaging in particularly large-scale fraud.

Armenian prosecutors alleged that Smbatyan’s actions led to a loss of one billion drams for the state and that a 300 square-metre plot of the Yerevan Tchaikovsky Music School had been stolen.

Smbatyan was appointed principal conductor of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) on 1 January 2022.  

In a statement from his lawyer Yervand Varosyan, the Armenian prosecutor-general had stopped the criminal prosecution “on the grounds that the impeachable act was not committed by him.”