The recent exposure of video recordings featuring Luis Moreno Ocampo and his son Tomas has added a dramatic new chapter to what was already a troubling story. Ocampo, the Argentine-born former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has for several years positioned himself as a neutral legal expert on the former Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

The leaked footage, published by Minval Politika on 30 April 2026, strips away that pretence entirely. In one recording, Tomas Ocampo states bluntly that the goal of their network is to “remove Pashinyan” - Armenia’s sitting prime minister. In another, Luis Ocampo himself boasts that a former aide to EU foreign policy chief is now on his payroll and operating inside the European Parliament, enabling him to “correct European policy,” pressure European Commission President von der Leyen, and pursue legal action through European courts to force the cancellation of the EU’s energy contract with Azerbaijan. These are not the words of an impartial expert. They are the operational disclosures of a paid political operative.

None of this is entirely surprising to those who have followed Ocampo’s trajectory. His intervention in the Armenia-Azerbaijan relations predates the current controversy. In August 2023, he produced what he styled an “expert opinion” alleging that Azerbaijan was committing genocide against Armenians in Garabagh region of Azerbaijan. The document was widely cited by Armenian advocacy groups and sympathetic media outlets before its serious legal and methodological deficiencies were exposed.

Ocampo’s personal credibility had already been compromised long before he turned his attention to Azerbaijan. While serving as ICC chief prosecutor, investigations by the European Investigative Collaborations and Der Spiegel revealed that he had managed numerous offshore companies in notorious tax havens in breach of ICC Statute requirements, and had received undisclosed payments from a Libyan billionaire subsequently linked to militia violence. The ICC’s own sitting prosecutor asked him “refrain from any public pronouncement or activity that may - by virtue of his prior role as ICC prosecutor - interfere with the activities of the office or bring it into disrepute”.

What the leaked recordings now confirm is that Ocampo’s activities were never confined to producing opinion papers. His network - financially supported, according to multiple reports, by Russian-Armenian oligarchs including Samvel Karapetyan - has been systematically engaged in lobbying European institutions, cultivating contacts within the European Parliament, and coordinating with the Armenian diaspora lobby in the United States.

The timing of these disclosures matters. Armenia is heading into a parliamentary election in which the central question before voters is whether to ratify, through their ballots, the peace agenda of Prime Minister Pashinyan or to reject it in favour of forces whose political programme is defined by opposition to the ongoing peace process with Azerbaijan. Ocampo’s network, as Tomas Ocampo’s own words confirm, has placed itself squarely on the side of the latter. The recordings reveal a foreign lobbying apparatus actively working to shape Armenia’s domestic politics in directions that serve neither Armenian nor regional interests, but rather the agenda of those who profit from continued conflict.

The appropriate response from European institutions is not silence. If a former Borrell aide is genuinely embedded in an Armenian lobbying operation being run from within the European Parliament, Belgian authorities and EU ethics bodies have an obligation to investigate. The European Parliament’s own resolutions on ArmeniaAzerbaijan matters - several of which, including the latest one adopted on April 30, 2026, have adopted language that aligns remarkably closely with the Russia-leaning opposition’s political narrative rather than the peace process - deserve scrutiny in this new light. And international media and legal bodies that have previously amplified Ocampo’s claims without adequate verification should reconsider the weight they have assigned to his assessments.

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