Georgia officials received $8.7m in gifts, watchdog says

A total of 379 Georgian public officials received cash, property and other gifts worth a combined 24m lari ($8.7m; £6.8m) over an eight-month period, according to an anti-corruption watchdog.

Transparency International (TI) Georgia said the assets, declared between September 2025 and April 2026, included residential properties, land, luxury cars and firearms.

The Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, dismissed the findings, accusing the organisation of "manipulating" data as part of a "hybrid warfare" campaign.

According to the report, the most common gifts received by officials were property and cash.

Some 100 officials received property worth more than 12m lari, including 48 residential homes and 69 land plots.

During the same period, 233 officials accepted cash gifts worth a combined 11m lari, with 28 individuals receiving cash sums exceeding 100,000 lari. Much of this cash was declared in foreign currencies, including $2.03m and €616,000.

The watchdog found that the majority of these gifts came from immediate family members, with parents accounting for more than 60% of the total value.

Responding to the report, Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said the figures were being distorted.

"Adding together gifts from a husband to his wife, from a child to a parent or from a parent to a child, and presenting them as headline figures is manipulation and a farce," Papuashvili said.

He argued that because the assets had been officially declared by officials, they could not be considered illegal income.

"If something were illegal income, no one would declare it," he added.

Papuashvili went on to accuse TI Georgia of acting as "a tool of hybrid warfare" against the country and called for the organisation’s foreign funding sources to be made public.

TI Georgia said its research was based strictly on public asset disclosures and aimed to identify financial interests and "potential corruption risks" in the public sector. The watchdog has previously raised concerns that Georgia is showing signs of becoming a "kleptocracy".

The report analysed declarations across 158 public institutions, finding that employees at the Interior Ministry received the highest-value gifts. Forty-six officials at the ministry declared assets worth a total of 2.3m lari ($833,000).

The Foreign Ministry ranked second, with employees declaring gifts worth 2m lari, followed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture at 1.6m lari.

Among individual recipients, Tamar Dolidze, deputy head of the Foreign Ministry’s internal audit department, declared the highest-value gift, worth 930,060 lari ($337,000).

Other top recipients included First Deputy Defence Minister Paata Patiashvili, who declared 446,080 lari, and Health Minister Mikheil Sarjveladze, who declared 500,000 lari.

The findings come amid heightened scrutiny of public integrity in the country. Georgia’s State Security Service recently announced 14 criminal cases and 28 arrests involving allegations of bribery and the falsification of official documents.