Developer Company Center Point to Be Sold

The Head of the construction company Center Point board Guram Rcheulishvili stated that he is going to sell the company.

Rcheulishvili said four companies are interested in purchasing Center Point and one of them is Ukrainian. 

He added the companies are currently studying the situation around the Center Point Company as well as its assets and liabilities. 

Rcheulishvili explained that the buyer company will obtain obligations on resolution of problems with the Center Point clients that experienced loss. 

The Center Point Case is the biggest construction scandal in Georgia. In 2012, the non-governmental organization Transparency International (TI)-Georgia prepared a report on the case, saying that, in total, the Center Point Group had mishandled $310 million paid by around 6,200 customers for the construction of their houses.

Center Point Group was established in 1999, and aimed to raise capital from citizens and implement construction projects. It was a conglomeration of 70 companies, 55 Limited Liability Companies (LLC) and 15 individual partnerships, owned by the three well-known people in Georgia: Vakhtang Rcheulishvili, Maia Rchuelishvili, and Rusudan Kervalishvili.

The company went bankrupt following the 2008 war. Dexus, a company managing Center Point Group’s assets since September 2010, pledged to finish suspended constructions within three years. The company was established on 23 August 2010, just two weeks before undertaking the management of Center Point Group’s construction projects.

However, Dexus has worsened the initial conditions for the affected customers by asking them to pay burdensome taxes and additional costs for their houses. According to NGO TI-Georgia, Dexus became involved in an allegedly illicit deal through which the founders of the Center Point Group claimed the customer's valuable property.

In early April 2017, Tbilisi City Court has sent the founders of the Center Point Group construction company, former Vice-Speaker of Parliament Rusudan Kervalishvili and her sister Maia Rcheulishvili, to prison for four years for embezzlement and misspending clients’ money.

The case has been in progress for more than four years. The sisters are accused in misspending $5,548,341 and GEL 20,692,408.

Guram Rcheulishvili was also detained with the charges of embezzlement of 19 million Gel.

He was released on April 7. Prosecutors had been demanding the release of Guram Rcheulishvili in exchange of a bail worth 50,000 GEL but he left prison after paying 30,000 GEL as bail.

By Thea Morrison