Bipartisan Leaders of Helsinki Commission Call for Sanctions Against Ivanishvili
Helsinki Commission leaders are calling on the Biden administration to sanction former Prime Minister and the founder of the Georgian Dream party, currently the honorary chair of the party, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, in a letter addressed to the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
The letter signed by Reps. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), the chairman of the committee, and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.); and commissioners Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) urges Secretary Anthony Blinken to take “immediate and decisive” steps regarding the situation in Georgia to hold the “increasingly authoritarian and antidemocratic government in Tbilisi” accountable for its actions. Noting the sanctions already in place, the letter stresses that “the pace and severity of events on the ground suggest to us that more needs to be done urgently to protect the Georgian population.”
“We believe the time is right to begin the process of leveling individual financial sanctions against key nodes of corruption and malign influence in Georgia,” the letter says. It names Bidzina Ivanishvili and his inner circle as the main targets of the proposed sanctions.
“It must be made clear that the principal agents of corruption and malign influence in or in league with anti-Western elements in Georgia will not be free to prey on the Georgian people and attack its democracy at will,” the letter states.
The letter particularly notes that a considerable source of the “dark money” that sustains the activities of the Georgian Dream party comes from the activities of a network of scam call centers around the world. These call centers act as “nodes of cooperation between corrupt agents in Georgia as well as their other kleptocratic counterparts in Russia,” and they have likely been mobilized to intimidate the opposition and civil society in Georgia. Profits generated by these call centers have helped “maintain the troubling system of political economy that facilitated the recent antidemocratic and anti-western turn in Georgia,” and they have also played a role in propping up “systems of sanctions evasion and avoidance.”
The implementation of individual financial sanctions and the disruption of these scam call center networks by U.S. and friendly foreign law enforcement agencies “would strongly complement our bill, the Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence (MEGOBARI) Act,” the letter reads.
Also Read:
- 21/06/2024 – Former GD Advisor Mitchell Briefs the U.S. Helsinki Commission
- 26/04/2024 – U.S. Helsinki Commission Urges Georgian Government Against Foreign Agents Bill
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
