Government and prosecutors office definitively separated after 5-year process
Minister of Justice Thea Tsulukiani headed the final prosecutors council meeting yesterday. Photo: Ministry of Justice
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The process of separating the government and the Prosecutors’ Office, which started back in 2013, has finally come to an end.
Minister of Justice Thea Tsulukiani headed the final prosecutors council meeting yesterday where the members elected new a chairwoman, Nana Khunjua. Tsulukiani also summarised the five-year period of the reform and wished success to the Prosecutor's Office on its independent future development.
“We have finished a five-year process aimed at strengthening the Prosecutor's Office and making it more independent. I wish the Prosecutor General to work in accordance with the principles we have outlined in the law: political neutrality, fairness, competence and professionalism,” Tsulukiani said.
Tsulukiani was the initiator of the reform in 2013 when she rejected her function as Chief Prosecutor and elaborated a reform project aimed at creating a prosecutors council, conference and the ad hoc prosecutor's institution. The council was made a constitutional body afterwards.
The parliament of Georgia is scheduled to adopt a new law over the country’s chief prosecutor’s office, through which the body will act independently from the executive government, Georgian Dream ruling party lawmaker Eka Beselia said.
Acting Justice Minister Mikheil Sarjveladze has nominated three candidates for the position of chief prosecutor, after the former Chief Prosecutor Irakli Shotadze resigned on May 31.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor Irakli Shotadze has resigned in the wake of the Tbilisi City Court verdict on the high profile murder case of two teenage boys in central Tbilisi in December last year. In a special statement released on the official page of the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office, Shotadze stated that his body has taken all measures to establish the truth on the case.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office has released a statement on the audio recordings broadcast by Rustavi 2 TV channel yesterday related to the high-profile Khorava Street Murder case, in which a currently detained former official of the prosecutor’s office says that he has “serious compromising materials” against the Georgian Dream leadership.
A man arrested for killing his 13-year-old nephew has been sent to an asylum from the primary detention facility after doctors checked his health condition yesterday.
Georgia plans to promote mediation as alternative to solving disputes without lengthy and costly judicial procedures. The Justice Ministry believes, it is “a natural and more favourable way” of solving business and civic disputes.
Zurab Jgarkava, who was wanted in a high-profile murder case of a 35-year-old David Mumladze, has been detained, the Georgian Interior Ministry reports.
Former Georgian Prosecutor General Irakli Shotadze, who resigned in 2018, has been registered to run for the post again after former Chief Prosecutor Shalva Tadumadze was approved as a lifetime judge of the Georgian Supreme Court in December 2019.
Public opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office in Georgia tends towards trust, says the latest survey published by the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), which shows that about half the public (57%) trusts the Prosecutor’s Office, 26 per cent does not, and 17 per cent report they ‘don’t know’.