Drug Charges Dropped but 2 Brothers Are Still in Limbo

After running Hollywood’s largest independent grocery store for more than a decade, Hagop Etmekjian, 41, cashed in his share of the business a few years ago and put more than $1.5 million in the bank. Not bad for a Romanian immigrant who had come to the United States 20 years earlier with little cash in his pocket and a knack for numbers.

He bought a BMW. He gave his brother, Garbis, 32, his house on Mt. Olympus and bought another house in Hollywood. Garbis, with his brother’s help, opened an interior decorating business and enrolled in law school. Hagop Etmekjian and his wife settled down to the business of raising twin babies.

But the fortunes of the Etmekjian family changed abruptly two weeks ago when a swarm of federal agents descended on their homes, armed with search warrants alleging that the two brothers were caught up in a $1-billion cocaine money-laundering operation centered in Los Angeles’ downtown jewelry district.

Garbis Etmekjian’s wife, Edie, said federal drug agents held her handcuffed for more than three hours while they removed 44 boxes of business papers, family heirlooms, bottles of cognac, jewelry--even her wedding ring--from the family home and drove away in their cars.

Agents at Hagop Etmekjian’s house leveled guns at the family maid, kicked down interior doors and slashed through the twins’ stuffed toys, apparently looking for drugs, the family said.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, it seemed, it was over. After both Etmekjians loudly proclaimed that federal investigators had arrested the wrong men, prosecutors late Wednesday dismissed all criminal charges against both men “in the interests of justice.”

The government says the investigation is not over, and that both Etmekjians could still be indicted later. But the two brothers maintain that they are not the men named “Hagop” and “Garbis” secretly recorded by the FBI as they conducted furtive discussions over the telephone with the alleged ringleader of the money-laundering operation.

The brothers submitted testimony from six friends, business associates and relatives swearing that the voices on the tapes are not theirs--are not even the same Armenian dialect that they speak. They submitted official voice samples to the government for analysis. They offered their tax records to prove they had earned their money legitimately and paid taxes on it.

“In my country, my old country, they used to have physical torture. Over here it’s mental torture. Even now, I feel that I am in the middle of a nightmare,” Hagop Etmekjian said Thursday.

“Please understand,” Garbis Etmekjian said. “We live in a tight-knit community. One’s self-respect is the most esteemed, the highest thing that an individual has. And from Day 1 when we came to the United States, the values that our parents taught us, we have tried pretty much not only to live by them, but also try to teach others the same. When you’re in this community, the Armenian community where we live, we will in 10,000 years, perhaps, not remove the tarnish that has been added to our name.”

Assistant U.S. Attys. Russell Hayman and Jean Kawahara would not say that the two brothers have been exonerated with the government’s dismissal of the criminal charges. Rather, they said, prosecutors are awaiting the outcome of a scientific voice analysis and other investigative leads to determine whether new charges should be filed.

Indictments against 33 other suspects arrested during the sweep, the largest drug money-laundering investigation in history, were returned Wednesday.

“We’re going to wait and see,” Hayman said. “The government is not in the habit of running around and indicting people until we’re sure that the standards of certainty required by the government have been met.”

But the Etmekjians’ attorneys, Anthony P. Brooklier and Andrew Willing, said prosecutors could simply have left the criminal charges pending until the voice comparisons are complete if they do not believe the Etmekjians are innocent.

“I see the dismissal of the complaint as substantial vindication of the Etmekjians, and I think that’s the only way it can be read,” said Willing, a former prosecutor. “I also think that the investigation of this case was sadly deficient, at least as far as these two are concerned. Someone in the faceless bureaucracy said this was my client, and we still don’t know how that happened.”

The affidavit upon which the brothers were arrested alleges that both were employees of Rose Marie Refining Inc., a downtown gold refining company that is believed to be part of one of the laundering operations.

The affidavit then relates a series of secretly recorded telephone conversations between “Hagop” at Rose Marie Refining and the purported ringleader, Nazareth Andonian, in which Hagop talked cryptically about a substance he called “polishing powder” and said that “people from the government went to see our boys there and they were asking about you.”

There is only one conversation recorded involving “Garbis” at Rose Marie, in which Garbis ordered seven kilos of an unidentified material.

Brooklier said the last names, in this case, were supplied by the government. “Hagop,” he said, is a common Armenian name that translates as “Jacob.” “Garbis” equates to “Gary.”

The Etmekjian brothers have denied ever being employed at Rose Marie Refining, although Hagop Etmekjian did own a jewelry store nearby for a few months. And both say that the first time they ever met Nazareth Andonian was in the federal lock-up after their arrest.

Kawahara, the other prosecutor, said Garbis Etmekjian’s name was on Rose Marie Refining’s incorporating papers. Willing said he has not seen the document, but said it is likely that Etmekjian might have signed the papers as a clerk for the law firm that handled the company’s business affairs.

“I consider it completely innocuous and a normal function of a law clerk to prepare and sign as an incorporator, and indeed, that is frequently done by secretaries, law clerks, paralegals and other such persons,” he said. None of the officers of Rose Marie Refining Inc. were named in the criminal indictment, he added.

In the meantime, the two brothers say they are left with no tangible charges to fight and their lives are in disarray.

Garbis Etmekjian had been arrested while taking the State Bar examination after federal agents, he said, cleared the waiting area outside.

“They thought that I’m a dangerous person, so that if there are any persons around me, I’d be taking hostages,” he said.

He does not know when he will be able to retake the Bar exam. Except for one of Garbis Etmekjian’s cars, neither brother has been able to recover any of his personal belongings, though prosecutors have said that most of it will be returned soon. Their houses are still in a mess--door frames shattered, closets strewn with debris, safes ripped apart.

“We had our house broken into in 1986,” Garbis Etmekjian said. “These (agent) guys did such a good job, it made the burglars look like amateurs.”