Translated material
Shevardnadze became godfather
Anti-corruption
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze believes that the scale of corruption in the country has reached a level where it “poses a threat even to the existence of the state.” By his order, since July, a group of experts led by the Chairman of the Supreme Court, Vladimir Chanturia, has been working on this problem, and yesterday a report entitled “Main Directions of the National Anti-Corruption Program” was published.The developers of the document propose to amend the criminal code, providing for the confiscation of property “acquired with income obtained by criminal means” as a punishment. The corresponding bill must be prepared before February 1, 2001. From December 1, the Ministry of Tax Revenue will begin checking the property declarations of owners of residential buildings built and under construction since 1997. If the declaration is not equivalent to the cost of the palace (in Tbilisi there is now a fashion for villas cleaner than Hollywood ones), you will have to separately pay the treasury an income tax corresponding to the market price of the building.
The structure of control over the activities of law enforcement agencies must be improved, a code of ethics for their employees must be adopted, and personnel reform must be carried out. In particular, the Ministry of Internal Affairs will provide specific proposals to reduce the number of traffic police by December 15. Georgia sees itself as a transport corridor, but now its roads are literally occupied by greedy traffic cops, which turns this corridor not into the “Great Silk Road”, but into the “Great Silk Dead End”. Something like a code of honor will also be proposed for members of parliament. It is also planned to create a “mechanism to prevent lobbying of personal interests” by deputies.
According to the program developers, a “coordinating body for anti-corruption policy” should be formed under the president. If it is not possible to “re-educate” the police and the prosecutor’s office, then this body will be given a structural unit with the right of inquiry and preliminary investigation against “particularly dangerous manifestations of elite corruption.”
The average person is looking forward to open trials of “elite” mafiosi. There is also the first sign - the former general director of Gruzenergo Emzar Chachkhiani was accused of using his official position for personal gain and causing damage to the state in the amount of approximately 6 million lari and was taken into custody.
A remarkable detail - literally on the eve of the publication of the document, the Prosecutor General's Office announced that it would not initiate a criminal case against the nephew of the President Nugzar Shevardnadze, an oil tycoon. Now that the charges against the president’s family have been dropped, Shevardnadze Sr. promises to be merciless, and in Georgia they are already remembering the early 70s, when he headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs and imprisoned people for embezzlement and bribery, regardless of person.