TI Georgia: ‘near total impunity’ for elite corruption in Georgia

Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia)  says in its recent findings that petty corruption is ‘impressively low’ in Georgia, while elite corruption is nearly unpunished. 

It says that after the Rose Rev­o­lu­tion in 2003, Georgia under­went a series of sweep­ing reforms that suc­cess­fully curbed petty cor­rup­tion in the pre­vi­ously graft-plagued public admin­is­tra­tion, and that the achievement has been maintained up to now. 

However, TI Georgia states that neither the United National Movement, nor the Georgian Dream governments have taken any genuine steps to  effectively combat elite corruption. 

TI Georgia has recommended the EU to help the country fight against high-level corruption. 

“EU should con­sider intro­duc­ing con­di­tion­al­ity on key anti-cor­rup­tion reforms, such as the estab­lish­ment of an inde­pen­dent anti-cor­rup­tion agency and cre­ation of a ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship reg­istry, both of which are nec­es­sary pre­con­di­tions for any future efforts to combat high-level cor­rup­tion and state capture,” TI Georgia said. 

TI Georgia noted that in addi­tion to con­di­tion­al­ity the EU should con­sider employ­ing the model of engage­ment that it used during the visa lib­er­al­iza­tion process with Georgia to help improve the anti-cor­rup­tion envi­ron­ment in general.