Nino Lomjaria, former Public Defender and founder of the non-governmental organisation “Georgia’s European Orbit”, has responded on social media to today’s statement by the Speaker of Georgia’s Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili.

According to Nino Lomjaria, not a single assessment published by her consilium regarding Saakashvili’s state of health has been questioned by any professional to date.

Furthermore, Lomjaria states that, regarding the funding for the non-governmental organisation she established, the total amount received from all European and non-European donors, including funds allocated for the observation mission, since 2023 to the present day has not even reached one million lari.

“We pay this man, Shalva Papuashvili, 14,000 lari a month from our pockets to oversee the activities of public officials. It emerged that during his time in office, everyone from the Prime Minister to the head of the State Security Service was involved in extreme corruption and criminal activities, yet Mr Papuashvili claims to have been unaware. Instead, he is preoccupied with intentionally spreading false information about my colleagues and me. Every statement he has circulated about me is a deliberate lie and disinformation.

First of all: not a single assessment published by the Public Defender and her consilium has been questioned by any professional to date. All conclusions are publicly available; let them present evidence of what was ‘falsified’. The Strasbourg Court itself relied upon the Public Defender’s consilium conclusions when issuing interim measures for Saakashvili’s transfer to a medical facility.

As for the funding of the non-governmental organisation I founded, since the day of its establishment, far from having ‘illegally received millions of lari’ from Brussels, the total amount received from all European and non-European donors (the European Union, the United Nations, the USA, etc.) from 2023 to the present day, including funds received for financing the observation mission, does not even reach one million lari.

Look for illegally obtained income in your own camp, Mr Shalva, in your team and in your political circle. Despite the above, I do not intend to sue Shalva Papuashvili for defamation, because this man, who has become a highly paid troll, can cause me neither reputational nor moral damage,” Nino Lomjaria wrote.

The Speaker of Georgia’s Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, wrote on social media today that “whilst serving as Public Defender, Nino Lomjaria produced a false conclusion regarding Saakashvili’s health, which Brussels used as grounds when the EU Ambassador sent a démarche to the Minister of Justice demanding Saakashvili’s transfer to them”. According to Papuashvili, after leaving the post of Public Defender, Nino Lomjaria created an “NGO” which “instantly received millions of lari in funding from Brussels.”