“Instead of calls, it would be easier for the US Congress and Senate to ensure publicizing funds flowing from the US budget into Georgia,” said Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili echoing the letter of 14 US Senators addressed to Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze. The letter says that if the bill On Transparency of Foreign Influence is passed, “they would be compelled to encourage a shift in U.S. policy toward Georgia.”

According to the Speaker, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) does not make the projects public that they finance in Georgia, despite the promise through the communication for 1 year. 

“It remains concealed in what the money is spent and we learn accidentally that the US budget money, through bypass routes, is spent on financing political parties, radical and disinformation groups that is not good for Georgian society and casts a shadow on the US aid in Georgia,” he said. 

The Speaker noted that the statements are not argument-based. 

“All we hear in these statements is that the bill is against some values. Let them concretize these values. How transparency can contradict European values, is unimaginable. How can the mildest law, in comparison to those which act in the US, England, and France, generate questions? 

At this moment, a perception remains that the problem, in fact, is not in the compliance of values but in certain organizations, which do not want to make their finances public. Transparency is good in one way, but the ones who avoid transparency are the ones who hide something. Therefore, those who are the loudest critics are the ones at whose backs stand the funds that hide their money in Georgia,” he said.