Prime Minister ready to declassify Defence Ministry documents

Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has agreed to declassify some documents about a controversial procurement which lead to the arrest of four Defence Ministry officials.

This information was announced by Vice Prime Minister Kakha Kaladze when was interviewed on a television show yesterday.

"This is a specific [case of] alleged corruption. I do not want to break the presumption of innocence but I must say that the prosecution has serious questions regarding this case. We will wait for the investigation [to finish before making a judgment],” he said.

"[Prime Minister] Irakli [Garibashvili] requested to lead the investigation in a completely transparent way. We talked about the declassification of documents and the Prime Minister agreed on this,” he said.

"It is also in our interest to deal with this issue transparently so that no one is left with any questions because the Defence Ministry is one of the strategic ministries of our country,” Kaladze noted.

The Chief Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia claimed the four currently serving officials and another ex-Ministry official arranged a sham tender in 2013 to lay a fiber optic cable and procure networking equipment.

The Office claimed the men violated the Georgian tender laws when they "gave an advantage” to Silknet, one of the country’s largest telecommunications operators, as the Ministry signed a 6.7 million GEL contract when the services were worth 2.6 million GEL.

If the men are found guilty, they could face a prison sentence from seven to 11 years.