Ombudsman Accuses Financial Police of Wrongdoings

Georgian Public Defender Sozar Subari said on March 2 that dozen of restaurants in Tbilisi and on the outskirt of the capital experienced significant financial loses because of procedural wrongdoings committed by the Financial Police in the process of probing into of these restaurants.

In the course of December, 2005-January, 2006 dozen of restaurants were forced to cease operation for at least two weeks and some of them for an entire month after the Financial Police launched simultaneous probes into the alleged financial wrongdoings of these restaurants.

“Neither the Financial Police nor the Tax Department had the right to freeze the activities of these facilities. Of course the fight against tax evasion is necessary but not at the expense of violating the law,” Sozar Subari said.

Chief of Financial Police Davit Kezerashvili denied these accusations as “groundless.” “I can not understand why the fight against tax evasion is a violation of human rights. With each case we had a court warrant to carry out these probes,” Davit Kezerashvili said at a news conference on March 2.

But according to the Public Defender’s Office the Financial Police had no court warrant in two cases involving restaurants in Tbilisi.

Sozar Subari also said that in the process of studying this issue, representatives of the Public Defender’s Office questioned the owners of the restaurants. “But it seems that most of them are intimidated and are being pressured so they are refraining from giving clear answers,” Subari said.