Bill on de-oligarchization to be sent to the Venice Commission before discussion
By Liza Mchedlidze
Tuesnday, October 4, 2022
The working group of the Legal Affairs Committee held a meeting on the issue of de-oligarchization.
According to Anri Okhanashvili, the chairman of the legal affairs committee, an exact analogue of the Ukrainian model will be presented and the opinions and recommendations of the members of the working group will be heard.
According to Okhanashvili, after that, the discussed issues will be sent to the Venice Commission.
The chairman of the committee said that the consideration of the draft law will begin after the conclusion of the Venice Commission. According to him, the consensus around the bill is important.
"Discussions will begin after we have the report of the Venice Commission. The commission should present a conclusion regarding the Ukrainian model, and further work on these issues will continue. Our goal is to achieve change with a broad consensus, and the opinions of all political groups and international partners will be interesting, so we will continue to discuss the issue even after it has been initiated.
If the Ukrainian law is approved by the European structures, it is logical that for us this point can be fulfilled by adopting this law, however, if we all agree that this law has many flaws and we confirm to you that there are many legal flaws in the Ukrainian law and this project as well, we must discuss together . However, to fulfill this point, we considered the evaluation of the European structures in relation to the Ukrainian model as an objective measure, and therefore we transferred the model one by one", says Okhanashvili.
According to Anri Okhanashvili, the draft law will not take into account specific names and surnames, because, in his estimation, it is nonsense for any law to be based on specific names.
"The draft law defines a person's participation in political and public life; whether it has a significant impact on the mass media; monopolistic activity; It is also determined how much money he should own. Three of these criteria are enough for a person to be considered an oligarch."
"This draft law cannot be applied to Bidzina Ivanishvili either physically or objectively, for the reason that the three proposed criteria cannot ensure that Bidzina Ivanishvili will be included in the list of oligarchs." All these three components are performed by Kezerashvili and those other oligarchs who were considered oligarchs by confessions, other facts and statements of the opposition", says Anri Okhanashvili.
According to him, if in Ukraine the office of the president works on the persons to be included in this list, because the country is a presidential republic, in Georgia, as a parliamentary republic, this function will be assigned to the parliament.
"The issue should be discussed in the Parliament in a transparent, inclusive manner, with the involvement of political groups, the criteria should be discussed, information should be sought regarding the persons at the committee hearing, at the plenary session, and the public should see who these persons are, who should be included in the register," he says.
The chairman of the legal affairs committee also called the opposition to join the working groups.
