Georgian president accuses prosecutors of releasing classified document

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili accuses the Prosecutor’s Office of publishing a document which was classified as top secret, but the office denied this.

August 8, Margvelashvili expressed concern about the publishing of a document showing the expenses of the Special Protection Service.

He said he plans to address the Interior Ministry about this issue, but the Interior Ministry also denies that the Prosecutor’s Office has published top secret information.

The Prosecutor’s Office claims that documents about inappropriate expenditure of state money had been labeled top secret without any legal basis.

According to the office, they twice applied to the president’s administration about expenses allocated for Georgia’s Special Protection Service to declassify them, on July 12 and August 6; but the documents were not declassified and the administration also didn’t send a letter rejecting the application.

The Prosecutor’s Office also informs that August 8, representatives of the office met with the president about this issue, but the meeting did not lead to any results.

“The Georgian president removed the label from these documents late evening on August 8,” the statement reads, adding that the office welcomes this because they will now have access to important evidence for the investigation.

In addition, the office claims they haven’t violated any law and the president’s accusations are groundless.

According to lawyer Levan Alapishvili, the president’s complaints are actually not groundless.

He explained to Interpressnews that letters between the Prosecutor’s Office and the country’s Commander-in-Chief are top secret and the office doesn’t have a right to publish them. Letters sent between the two must be protected.

The lawyer thinks that there might have taken place a violation of law and the Interior Ministry is obliged to launch an investigation into this.

He says that two letters sent from the office to the president’s administration were labeled as top secret, but now they are known to the public.

If at least one sentence from letters which are top secret becomes public, the Interior Ministry should launch an investigation, especially after the president made it clear that the top secret documents were published, he argued.

The Interior Ministry only made a short statement saying that it hasn’t violated any law and the president has been misled.