Parliament committee chair: deoligarchisation law “not in favour or against specific persons”

Mikheil Sarjveladze, the chair of the Georgian parliament’s committee on human rights, on Monday said the law on deoligarchisation, designed to address one of the conditions of the European Union for granting Georgia the membership candidate status, was not created “in favour or against specific persons”.

Sarjveladze noted there was “no objective basis” for a conclusion over the relevance of the initiative to the former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili.

The main thing for the concept of an oligarch is of a person using the government for their own interests and having specific influences in relation to the government. In this case, we do not have it”, he said in relation to the former PM.

“I rule out the application of this law to Bidzina Ivanishvili personally. As for other people, anyone who may have [above-mentioned] influences may naturally be subject to the regulation of this law”, the parliament official said.

On October 3, Anri Okhanashvili, the chair of the Georgian parliament's legal affairs committee from the ruling Georgian Dream party, said the working group engaged in implementing European Union conditions was preparing to present its bill on deoligarchisation.

Okhanashvili noted discussions on the bill would begin after the Council of Europe's Venice Commission submitted its report on the Ukrainian version of a similar initiative.

• Parliament committee chair: parliamentary group to present bill on deoligarchisation

Okhanashvili stressed the goal was to achieve the amendments through a “broad consensus”, and added views of “all political groups and international partners” on the issue would be “interesting”.