PM: Writing Off Debts of 600,000 Georgians Was Not Vote-Buying

Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze said writing off the bank debts of 600,000 Georgians, an initiative announced by the government before the October presidential elections last year, had nothing to do with vote-buying.

Bakhtadze made the statement during the debates in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on April 10.

“It has nothing to do with bribery. I initiated this issue as a Finance Minister a year before the elections. As the Prime Minister, I declared in August that over 600,000 people could not participate in economic life because they were blacklisted. This program was very successful and let me repeat once again that it was not related to the elections,” the PM answered to the question of one of the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

On December 15, 2018, the Government of Georgia started annulment of the debts of over 600,000 citizens, of which 150,000 were socially vulnerable.

Within the initiative, the banks selected those customers who had been unable to cover their debts, which did not exceed GEL 2000. Later they sent the lists of such customers to Cartu Foundation, a fund owned by ruling Georgian Dream founder and chair, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, which stated they would cover the total amount of such debts, reaching 1.6 billion GEL.

The process was concluded in mid-January and it was assessed by some opposition parties and some NGOs as vote-buying.

By Thea Morrison