Parliament Speaker claims “coordinated assault of disinformation” over transparency law “confirmed” by study

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Monday claimed a new study had “confirmed” a “coordinated assault of disinformation” against the controversial law on transparency of foreign influence with the involvement of “not only domestic non-governmental organisations, but also their international donors”.

Papuashvili’s comments followed after the ruling Georgian Dream party conducted the study for establishing levels of transparency within domestic NGOs.

It examined 474 domestic organisations, with the results saying 51 percent of the groups did not have a website, 62 percent had not specified information about their donors, 68 percent had not specified names of projects, 89 percent had not specified the amount of received grants, 97 percent had not published annual reports and 70 percent had not specified information about their teams.

This study also confirmed a coordinated assault of disinformation that has been going on in Georgia during these months, where not only NGOs but also their donors were involved, and assured the public and us behind closed doors that everything [about NGO spending] is transparent [and] known to people”, Papuashvili claimed.

He added there was “not a problem with the transparency law” and that it aimed to make information about “where the funds flow, for what purpose and what they are spent on” public.

The law was adopted by the Parliament in May and requires groups “considered to be an organisation pursuing the interests of a foreign power” - determined by more than 20 percent of their funding coming from abroad - to be registered in the public registry with the status and publicise their received funding.