Television in exchange for a factory

Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza

Ahead of his resignation, the former prime minister of Georgia, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, promised that the government would soon publish “a sensational document” which revealed “the methods which Saakashvili and his team used to suppress business in the country.” The fact that the authorities under Saakashvili “nightmarized business” is thought to be confirmed in Georgia. Even some supporters of the former president in the United National Movement admit that “sometimes certain cases of stripping of citizens’ possessions and businesses took place.” In most cases it was presented as a plea bargaining with arrested businessmen or “gift deed” to the state, which were signed at night with involvement of “reliable” notary officers.

These facts are obvious even for the current opposition. However, the document published by the Ministry of Justice raises eyebrows. The agreement between the Georgian government and successors of the late businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili (who died of heart attack in 2008) was thought to be secret. The law on National Security Information protected it from public attention; it required 10 years of imprisonment for disclosure of secret information. However, the government of Irakly Garibashvili eliminated a secret mark and the scandalous document became available for everybody. The document states that successors of Patarkatsishvili (his widow Inna Gudavadze and sisters Mzia and Nana Patarkatsishvili) got all possessions of the Rustavi Iron and Steel Works, including a vast territory and all buildings. In exchange for this the family refused from Badri’s beloved child – a TV-company of Imedi which was actually seized by the authorities in autumn 2007, when Imedi was a center of anti-government protests and was crashed by task forces.

If one reads the document, he or she has an impression that Bidzina Ivanishvili not only tired to incriminate the former government, but also threw mud at the another side. It is well-known that Ivanishvili and Patarkatsishvili have never been friends, they competed, when they lived in Moscow. And in Georgia they almost didn’t communicate.

For three years tens of thousands of people protested in the streets and demanded to return the TV-channel to his “family”; but it appeared successors of Patarkatsishvili conducted secret negotiations with the government about refusal from their claims in exchange for big assets. The Rustavi Iron and Steel Works is much more expensive than Imedi. Saakashvili needed a control over media resources; that’s why he agreed to give away one of major factories of the country in exchange for a TV-company which could be used as a crucial resource of influence on political processes.