According to parliamentary majority member Irakli Kadagishvili, transparency, including transparency in NGO funding, is problematic even within the European Union. He states that European parliamentarians have numerous questions and scandalous findings concerning NGO funding, their purposes, and the underlying schemes.

According to Irakli Kadagishvili’s explanation, this issue has been on the agenda in Georgia for quite some time, especially after “NGOs became creators and conductors of political agendas, including such radical agendas as organizing various types of revolutions.”

“Our demand from the beginning was fair, legal, and a continuation of European values, but it turned out that European values can be used pharisaically in this case in Georgia. For example, transparency is a Russian Putinist phenomenon. Why is it a Russian and Putinist phenomenon? Apparently because these NGOs, if we look at Georgia’s practice, are mainly engaged in creating political agendas. In many cases, discrediting elections and then organizing various revolutions. Of course, all this is anti-European and illegal action and contradicts all international norms, especially the spirit that is called Europe.

Consequently, neither the donors nor recipients of this funding were comfortable with transparency about it. The United States banned such types of funding, USAID no longer exists, though this practice exists in Europe. We also see that this amounts to millions, if we convert it to lari. Essentially, each million euros allocated to these organizations is approximately 3 million Georgian lari in funding. What’s important for us is not just knowing the amount, but what specific purposes and needs the transferred euros serve. Our legislation ensures this level of transparency. I ask everyone to understand once and for all that transparency is a European civilized requirement and not Russian,” Irakli Kadagishvili declared.