Russian Tax Services Target Georgian Notables

The Russian Federal Tax Service has started to investigate two Russian notables of Georgian origin – Head of the Russian Academy of Arts Zurab Tsereteli and the popular fiction novelist with the penname Boris Akunin (real name Georgi Chkhartishvili).

The Tax Service reported a shortfall of 2.1 millon Roubles (around 78 thousand USD) in the files of the Academy of Arts, and pointed out that the checkup was “regularly scheduled.”

Boris Akunin, who has authored some of the most popular spy thrillers in Russia, did not exclude that the Tax Service attention is linked to the wave of the Russian government measures that target Georgians: “I never thought that in Russia one would witness ethnic cleansing”, Akunin told Moscow’s liberal Ekho Moskvi radio station.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)