The investigation revealed that during the events in Sumgait, Armenians deliberately or with special intentions committed provocations against their compatriots and then tried to blame the Azerbaijanis for those events.
For example, an Armenian named Benik Grigoryan, who lives in the 9th microdistrict of Sumgait, set fire to his apartment, as well as the apartment of a relative named Babayan, and then falsely reported that it was committed by an Azerbaijani named Fakhraddin Guliyev. During the inspection of the houses of these Armenians, it was found out that virtually empty apartments were burnt. When members of the investigation team noticed this, Benik Grigoryan offered them a bribe. However, the investigation team of the USSR Prosecutor General's Office did not make any legal assessment of this fact.
In addition, the investigation revealed that in some cases, in order to artificially expand the scale of crimes against Armenians in Sumgait and then to claim that these crimes were committed by Azerbaijanis, Armenians took their property, left their apartments and deliberately set fires there while moving.
Thus, Abdullayev Abdulla Bahman, who worked as the head of Housing and Utilities Department No. 9 during the events, stated in his testimony that he went to the scene with investigators in connection with the information about the fire in the apartment of an Armenian woman named Seda in the building No. 36, the 9th microdistrict, which belongs to the service area of the housing and communal services. He broke the door of the apartment because it was closed and entered it. He saw that the house was completely empty, and in the middle of one of the empty rooms there was smoke from the unheated electric heater. Later, he learned from the neighbors that the Armenian woman, who was the owner of the house, took out her belongings 1-2 days to the house of her acquaintances. He (A.Abdullayev) later tried to give a detailed statement to the Russian investigators, but a dispute arose between them, and the investigator asked him to change his statement, but he did not agree and told the truth about the incident.
It is clear from the testimony of Mammadov Eldar Ahmad, who worked as the first secretary of the Sumgait city committee of the Azerbaijan LKGI during the events, that in connection with the information he received about a fire in the apartment of an Armenian in a 9-storey building located nearby the 18th microdistrict, he went to that address as part of the Komsomol operative group. When he entered the apartment, he saw that no one was there, that there was an empty plate on the table in the middle of one of the rooms, and that part of the table was on fire, and that none of the owners was there. One of those who saw the fire and came to extinguish, explained them that to set a fire in the apartment, a burning candle was put on a plate filled with oil, so that when the candle burns out, the oil ignites, and in this way there is a fire in the apartment.