FBI Assisting Georgia in Sex Tape Probe

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is providing technical and investigative assistance to the Georgian side in the ongoing probe to identify those responsible for release of secretly recorded sex tapes, purportedly showing politicians, according to the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office and the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi.

Speaking at a news conference on April 1, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Mamuka Vasadze said that “an FBI representative is in Georgia for several days already, consulting a special investigative team.”

Asked to specify if the investigation already has any concert results and if it was possible or not to find out whether those videos were uploaded on internet from within Georgia or from abroad, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor responded: “I cannot comment on results of the ongoing investigation, but what I can say for sure is that those files have not been uploaded from within Georgia.”

Three politicians – two cabinet members and one opposition figure, as well as a TV journalist, were threatened on March 14 with releasing secretly recorded videos of their private lives. The threat was made in a form of a released sex tape of unidentified individuals, posted anonymously on YouTube with the text on the video threatening three politicians and a TV journalist to quit their professional activities before March 31. The video and the threat came few days after a separate sex tape, purportedly showing one of the opposition politicians, was anonymously posted on YouTube on March 11. On March 31 new sex tape reportedly emerged on the internet, purportedly showing a politician. But the Deputy Chief Prosecutor said it’s not possible to identify individual in the video or “whether it depicts information of private life of any individual.”

The Deputy Chief Prosecutor also claimed that “it has been established as a result of the investigation that not a single footage was created after October, 2012” – an assertion through which the current authorities are suggesting that the tapes were from a large cache of recordings, which were gathered through illegal surveillance in 2007-2012, and stored in the Interior Ministry. In September 2013 those files, stored in the Interior Ministry, were destroyed, but the officials were suggesting at the time that copies of those destroyed recordings could have been in possession of others.

Speaking at the same news briefing, FBI Legal Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Kathleen E. Canning, said on April 1 that the FBI was asked by the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office to assist them in this high profile investigation.

“Due to our experience in matters of this kind, we have agreed to provide technical and investigative assistance to the prosecutors and investigators,” she said. “We are confident the investigative team is exhausting all known leads to identify those responsible.”

“These types of complex investigations, which involve cyber components and cross international boundaries, are extremely difficult, require international cooperation at many levels and take time to work through the legal process. It is our hope, through continued collaboration, the PGO [the Prosecutor General’s Office] will identify those responsible and bring them to justice no matter where they may be,” she said and also asked those, who may have any information regarding this case, to come forward and contact the Prosecutor General’s Office or police.

Deputy Chief Prosecutor, Mamuka Vasadze, said that as part of the ongoing investigation search of 25 homes were conducted in Tbilisi and 166 CDs and DVDs “containing various”, unspecified information, as well as 26 computers; 37 mobile phone devices; 86 SIM cards; 53 memory cards; 5 external hard drives, were seized. He also said without elaborating details that the investigation is also examining CCTV footage from unspecified buildings and premises representing interest for investigators.

He said that 16 inquiries have been sent to number of foreign countries in a form of mutual legal assistance requests and the Georgian side is now “actively cooperating with competent authorities of respective countries to speed up” response to those requests.

This joint briefing for the press was convened amid mounting pressure from some civil society groups and opposition parties on the authorities and the prosecutor’s office in particular to speed up the probe not only into the case of releasing sex tapes and consequent blackmails, but also to carry out broader investigation into “systemic crime” involving illegal surveillance through which those recordings were obtained.

This Affects You, a campaign group of civil society organizations launched couple of years ago against illegal surveillance and reactivated following the recent release of sex tapes, has even called on the chief prosecutor, Irakli Shotadze, to resign, accusing him and the prosecutor’s office of a failure to investigate and to bring to justice those who have compiled archive of secret recordings of private lives.