Penalties for political parties
By Tea Mariamidze
Tuesday, December 6
Georgia’s State Audit Office (SAO) imposed a 250.000 GEL fine on various political parties, for receiving illegal donations during parliamentary election period.
The information was released by the Deputy Auditor General, Nino Lomjaria, at the presentation of SAO monitoring results of political parties’ activities during the October parliamentary elections.
The report revealed that the largest declared donations were received by the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, with 19,005,219 GEL, followed by the State for People Movement, which received 4,278,541 GEL, and then the main opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM) with 1,063,514 GEL.
The Alliance of Patriots of Georgia, which managed to enter the new parliament with 6 mandates, received 2,391,046 GEL donations.
The Free Democrats received 686,945 GEL in donations. The donations of all other parties amounted to around 3 million GEL in total.
Lomjaria said that there is a big difference in declared donations and declared expenses of the parties.
According to her, the SAO totally studied donations of more than 1,000 individuals.
“More than 120 persons were questioned, 40 people were summoned for questioning and 250.000 GEL fine was imposed on various political parties,” said the Auditor General.
Lomjaria noted that the largest portion of the fine was imposed on the donors of the State for People Party with 187,000 GEL and the Alliance of Patriots with 183,000 GEL.
She also noted that for illegal charity in favor of the GD several people were also fined by 8,000 GEL.
The Deputy Auditor General said that three cases were transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office as they contained 'criminal elements'.
The Auditor’s Office says the report on donations during the second round of elections will be published in a month.
