The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kobakhidze, on Wednesday, said “parliamentary discussion once again evidenced that opponents of the Draft Law [on Transparency of Foreign Influence] do not have any argument against it – they in fact have none!”
The PM noted that the law “is genuinely European as it is based on one of the main European values. It is transparency and accountability.”
“In addition to being European, this Draft Law is Georgian as it protects the main principle of Georgian statehood – state, national sovereignty. Draft Law solely envisages the following: annual reporting on funds received and expenditures incurred by organizations carrying the interests of foreign power. It is the minimum standard of transparency. You are all aware that a much higher standard of transparency exists in the United States and the European Commission approved of a draft law involving much tighter standards. Also, a number of EU Member States practice respective laws of much tighter standards.
You may recall when they were lying last year and even this year, claiming that everything was already transparent, as if public institutions received all the information about the non-government organizations (NGO). It was manifested in parliamentary discussions that it was an utter lie. In reality, we extracted data about seven organizations, including the most affluent ones, and it became clear that mere 18% of their funding was accessible to public institutions, rather than transparent. As for publicity, zero percent of these funds are public. Also, big portion of NGOs stay away from making their finances public at all. A simple question needs to be asked: when one receives and spends money, why would one wish to keep away from disclosing this information to the public? One receives money, spends it and keeps it hidden from society? Why should one not wish to have everything transparent for the public, if one is not confident in its own integrity? Answer to this question simply does not exist. If one has integrity, receives money and spends it, why would one wish to not show it to people? There is simply no answer to this,” the PM declared.
