More sex tapes leak on internet
Georgia unites against blackmail attempts

The Government of Georgia, law enforcers, human rights groups and the people of Georgia are uniting to jointly condemn the immoral practice of leaking secretly recorded sexual videos as a means of blackmail. 

After last week’s leak of an illegally obtained video, another clip was posted online today presumably also showing intimate details of the private lives of several government and opposition politicians and journalists.

The video was uploaded by an unknown user to YouTube this morning. The faces of the people who featured in the secret tape were pixelated but a description of the video mentioned several politicians and journalists, and said if those people didn’t step down from their political or journalistic activities by March 31, "another series” of videos would be released online. 

One of the journalists named in the video, Inga Grigolia, declared during a live broadcasting of her own TV show that she was not intimidated by the threat and she would not quit her job despite being blackmailed and the chance details of her private life would be made public.

"I’m a woman, mother, daughter and friend. I have an amazing boyfriend and I have a sex life which I’m going to have in the future too. And you, who are blackmailing me with making my private life public and want me to leave the country – I promise you I will die to protect the rights of others and mine own too and I’ll do my best to identify you so you’ll find yourself in prison and stay there for many years for filming these videos and spreading them,” Grigolia said. 

Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili invited human rights activists to his office today to discuss ways of countering this problem. 

Margvelashvili said the leaking of the videos was xxxx and he made several statements to support those being blackmailed.

"My follow citizens who are now facing dark threats, regardless of your political views and vision of the world, I stand by you and I will always defend you and protect your rights and show solidarity to you,” the President said.

"To prove this I want to tell society openly that sex and having a sex life is not shameful. Personally I have had, am still having and will continue to have a very rich sex life. I want to let you know that I will do my best to remove this meaningless, dark stigma off this topic.”

Then Margvelashvili addressed those responsible for filming and spreading the videos, and said: "We will find each of you and you will never be able to intimidate and terror the people of Georgia.” 

The President added he was working closely with the Prime Minister, Parliament Speaker and other leaders who had close communication with law enforcing bodies to solve these crimes.

Meanwhile Georgia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office collaborated with several agencies to remove the illegal videos from YouTube. The Office has launched an investigation into the case. 

British Ambassador to Georgia Alexandra Hall Hall commented on the leaking of the videos and said she was impressed by the way the Government and society reacted to the situation. She praised the actions of Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili for meeting heads of law enforcement agencies immediately after the first video was released online.

The Ambassador also praised the general public’s condemnation of the video, noting people didn’t show much interest in the secret videos as they were more interested in finding out who was responsible for filming and uploading the illegal tapes. 

"Such unity and solidarity gives me the hope that the Georgian society is going in the right direction,” the Ambassador said.

"I support the Georgian Government in its investigation of these facts,” she added. 

Not a single link to the secret tapes was posted on social media after the videos leaked. As a gesture of solidarity to those being blackmailed, and to also show it is perfectly natural to have sex, some users initiated fun campaigns like Sex Bucket Challenge; where a person posts a video of themselves smoking a cigarette after sex and challenges three other people to do the same. 

Meanwhile it is still unclear when the leaked videos were filmed. 

Vice Prime Minister Kakha Kaladze today said what happened was a "direct attack on the Government, the state and the European course” of Georgia. 

"I can’t say who runs these processes but we all know very well when such recordings were made and who made them. These were very dirty methods,” Kaladze said.

In 2013 a large number of secret recordings were discovered in weapons storage in western Georgia. Some recordings were graphic and featured sexual relations including homosexual activity and out-of-marriage-sex filmed from hotel rooms and other locations. It was believed the recordings were made with the purpose of blackmailing political opponents. 

At that time when the videos were made, Georgia’s then-president Mikheil Saakashvili said he had ordered the weapons to be hidden after the brief war with Russia in August 2008. He denied any involvement in the recordings. 

In early 2014 a large part portion of the secret videos were destroyed by the Georgian Dream Government. At that time President Margvelashvili said if the files that contained the offences were not be destroyed, in turn it meant "we are committing the crime again.” 

Despite this Interior Ministry officials agreed not to destroy all of the recordings because "if we destroy recordings except private life situations it would harm an investigation to determine who was behind keeping of these secret recordings”.

It’s not known whether or not the newly released videos were part of those secret recordings found in the weapons cache in 2013. 

Today Georgia’s Justice Minister Thea Tsulukiani said: "Our Government cannot take responsibility for creating and spreading these videos but our obligation is to identify those who created and spread the video.”