Tamar Chugoshvili says GYLA will ask for a reform of the state emergency funds. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch — A new survey shows that the least transparent issue during recent years has been the spending of money from two state reserve funds.

Georgian Young Lawyer’s Association (GYLA) presented the survey, which deals with the spending of money from the presidential and governmental reserve funds. The organization studied the years 2010-2011 and the period January-September in 2012.

According to the GYLA’s information, dozens of millions were spent, but the goals, advisability and exact amount of costs was unknown to the public.

The organization claims that the share of unknown costs is very high. This sum was over 21 million lari in 2010 (38% of the whole reserve fund) and over 16 million in 2011 (34%)

The biggest share of the president’s reserve fund in 2010 – over 12 million GEL – was allocated for funding the concerts, musical clips and other cultural events, the biggest shares of the 2011 costs – for building swimming pools, boulevards, stadiums, parks and cottages.

Sulkhan Saladze, a lawyer working for GYLA, said that 900 000 euros were spent for an Andrea Boccelli concert and for other public events in Batumi, a tourist city on the Black Sea, more that 4 million lari was allocated.


“Not a single decision about allocating money was explained,” Saladze added.

GYLA thinks the parlamentary elections impacted the president’s reserve fund a lot in 2012.

“In terms of budget expenditure, spending money from the presidential and governmental reserve funds has become one of the most opaque sphere in resent years (..) more that 33 million GEL was allocated for various infrastructural and social projects this year, but in most cases the specific purposes of spending money was not reflected president’s orders, that gave freedom to spending money to self government units,” the report says.

Tamar Chugoshvili, head of GYLA, said that the organization will present a project to the legislative body, which implies the reformation of reserve funds. The accent will be on definition of the reasons and necessary criteria for allocating money from funds.