MPO reinstates Maestro Sergey Smbatyan after fraud charges are dropped

Principal conductor Maestro Sergey Smbatyan will be reinstated to his former post by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) after he was cleared of alleged fraud.

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.

“The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra took note of the outcome of the criminal prosecution against its Principal Conductor Maestro Sergey Smbatyan by the Armenian prosecutor-general, which acquitted Mro Smbatyan of all charges,” the MPO said in a statement.

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 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.”