Appeal to the Prime Ministerial Candidate and the Parliament of Georgia
Civic IDEA responds to the nomination of Irakli Gharibashvili as the Prime Ministerial candidate of the “Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia” party and considers it necessary to address: the Parliament of Georgia, the society and the PM candidate.
It is known that Mr. Gharibashvili was a well-paid employee of the Chinese state-owned company “CEFC China Energy” for a long time after resigning from Prime Minister’s post in 2015. The company was particularly notorious worldwide for corruption, various types of illegal machinations, bribery of high-ranking officials and other criminal offenses. A large number of senior officials of the company are still under investigation.
Nowadays, Georgia is in a challenging situation, and one of the significant crosslines of the state’s national security runs through the Chinese-Russian interests in Georgia. To date, CEFC still owns 75% of the Poti Free Industrial Zone. Although the Chinese company itself has already gone bankrupt, it has not yet fulfilled its obligations and is in the process of paying off its creditors. Up to now, the Georgian government has not started the process of the state property return. The problem is augmenting day-to-day, as the strategic objects of Poti may become the property of the Russian state VTB bank, the bank to which the Chinese company owes a huge debt.
We appeal to the PM candidate: to explain what decision he intends to make on this issue – regarding the return of the property to the Georgian state by his former and currently bankrupt employer company that has been exposed to a number of criminal offenses?
Also, we appeal to the Parliament of Georgia to pay special attention to this issue in the following decision-making process. The abovementioned circumstance has already been a controversial matter during Mr. Gharibashvili’s assignment as a Defense Minister. Now, it is emerging as a special state security concern under his possible appointment as a Prime Minister of Georgia.
