Parliamentary Committee Probes Deal over Shipping Company
Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze instructed the Parliamentary Committee on the Sector Economy to inform the parliamentarians regarding the details of the Georgian government?s recent deal with the Greenoak Group, which envisages the government selling 100% of its shares of the Georgian Ocean Shipping Company.
On December 21 opposition MPs from the Republican Party and Rightist Opposition coalition condemned the deal as ?covert? and ?non-transparent.?
?Many details of this deal are not known, even by me. So I requested Mr. [Niko] Lekishvili [Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on the Sector Economy] to obtain information about this deal and inform the parliamentarians. If the MPs consider this information not sufficient, then we will convene the government members to discuss the issue at a parliamentary session,? Nino Burjanadze told reporters on December 21.
The Georgian government signed its largest-ever privatization deal with the Greenoak Group, a major investor company in Georgia, on December 17, selling the Georgian Ocean Shipping Company for USD 107 million. The agreement is preliminary, but the transaction will most likely be closed early in the New Year.
News about the deal broke only after the Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania and Jan Bonde Nielsen, who is the major shareholder and chairman of the Greenoak Group, signed an agreement on December 17.
