| A hotel in the center of Moscow will go under the hammer The Georgian presence in Moscow will sharply decrease: Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania yesterday at a government meeting proposed selling the embassy hotel in Moscow. According to him, “the proceeds will be enough to buy buildings for Georgian embassies in at least four to five more countries.”
The four-story embassy hotel is located in the very center of Moscow at the address: Skatertny Lane, 13. Accommodation in it costs from 30 to 70 dollars per day. Sources of the Vremya Novostei newspaper at the diplomatic mission found it difficult to name the estimated price of the building, since the prime minister’s initiative became news to them. The embassy is now more puzzled by who will be the new head of the diplomatic mission: the current ambassador, professional lawyer Konstantin Kemularia, who just this winter presented his credentials to the Russian President, will soon likely return to his homeland to head the Supreme Court.
Any means are good to replenish the Georgian budget. President Mikheil Saakashvili put government residences up for auction, deciding that officials did not need super comfort. The head of Georgia himself and his family are content with an ordinary three-room apartment. The new working residence of the president will be located in the former traffic police building (in the 19th century there was the Tiflis gendarmerie here). Funds from the sale of the Krtsani government residence, built in a cozy Tbilisi town by Lavrentiy Beria, will be used for repairs. Georgian Minister of Economy Kakha Bendukidze told reporters that some British and Russian businessmen have already become interested in purchasing the Krtsani residence.
Its starting price is approximately $15 million. It is a complex of official buildings and reception houses in a park area. While former President Eduard Shevardnadze has been living in Krtsanisi since 1992 and writing his memoirs. Several years ago, after a failed assassination attempt on the then President of Georgia, the Americans helped the Georgian special services “shackle” Shevardnadze’s place of residence with armor.
Yesterday, the Georgian Prosecutor General's Office announced that it was petitioning the courts to confiscate the property of three high-ranking officials of the Shevardnadze era. These are the former governor of the southern region of Kvemo Kartli, Levan Mamaladze, who is hiding, presumably in Russia, and the former head of the MGB anti-terrorism center Levan Kenchadze and the former Deputy Minister of State Security of Adjara Georgiy Kupreishvili, who were taken into custody for various sins. We are talking about apartments, villas, land plots, bank deposits of former officials and members of their families. Amendments have already been made to the Criminal Code of Georgia to allow the confiscation of the property of the guilty, which, according to the Femida representative, will be partially transferred to orphanages, low-income sections of society, and partially sold to benefit the budget. Mikhail VIGNANSKY, Tbilisi |
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