Badri Patarkatsishvili’s Family Appeals Against the Tbilisi City Court Verdict
May 30, 2008
Family of the deceased businessman, Badri Patarkatsishvili appealed against the Tbilisi City Court verdict of May 14, according to which Patarkatsishvili’s family members – his spouse and daughters are forbidden to take any judicial or actual motion regarding the businessman’s heritage property. According to the same verdict the plaintiff Joseph Kay is granted the right to take any motion he thinks necessary regarding the property of the businessman and philanthropist.
As they declared at the Tbilisi City Court, Patarkatsishvili’s family appealed on May 27, requesting the above mentioned verdict to be overridden.
According to the above mentioned verdict Judge Diana Berikashvili complied with Kay’s announcement on securing the suit.
Joseph Kay appealed to the Tbilisi City Court; he filed a suit on May 7, 2008 with a request to be acknowledged as Patarkatsishvili’s heir. Later Kay applied to the cour t with a request to secure the suit.
As Kay clarifies, the defendant, Patarkatsishvili’s widow tries to gain control and right over Patarkatsishvili’s heritage property through her daughters, without considering rights of other heirs, or the will of heritage manager and the will’s executor.
In his announcement Kay requested the Patarkatsishvilis to be forbidden to take any judicial motion over Patarkatsishvili’s property, including the property alienation, until the case is settled.
At the same time, Kay requested to be granted the right to “take any motion that he will consider necessary regarding Arkadi (Badri) Patarkatsishvili’s heritage collection and maintenance, as well as its sale”.
In the announcement of Patarkatsishvili’s family, spread by Georgian news agencies on May 29 it is noted that the Tbilisi City Court didn’t notify either the businessman’s family or the family lawyers about the abovementioned verdict.
“Patarkatsishvili’s family members accidentally learned that the Tbilisi City Court passed the verdict covertly on May 14, 2008. According to the verdict Badri Patarkatsishvili’s heritage was transferred into the management of his remote relative Soso Kakiashvili.
The verdict of the city court is based on the questionable document that according to Kakiashvili, Badri Patarkatsishvili handed him prior to his death. The paper, as a forged document, has already been appealed against in the American court,” – it is noted in the statement. It is also stated that “the Tbilisi City Court, having passed the verdict that lacks any judicial basis suppresses efforts of the businessman’s wife and daughters to defend and execute their rights of being Badri Patrkatsishvili’s legal heiresses”.
The statement also features assessment of the Patarkatsishvilis family lawyer, Lasha Birkaia regarding the above mentioned verdict of the Tbilisi City Court.
“Georgian court gave Kakiashvili the right that should have been granted after the case was settled. Hence, Georgian court settled current argument in advance. It is unimaginable for court to grant such extensive rights without the case hearing, what’s more, on the basis of feeble and suspicious proofs. One of the purposes of the above mentioned verdict is to block any claims of Badri’s widow and his daughters over the heritage, which violates their civil rights,” – declared Lasha Birkaia.
It is noted in the announcement that Badri Patarkatsishvili’s spouse and his children are protesting Kakiashvili’s motion in America, as Kakiashvili is the citizen of the U.S., as well as in all the countries where the businessman possessed property. “Kakiashvili couldn’t convince independent courts of other countries that he is the lawful manager of the businessman’s property. He could gain control on Patarkatsishvili’s assets in Georgia only, under a very suspicious conditions; including Imedi-Contact, Techno-Media and Imedi TV-Radio Company,” – it is noted in the statement.
The businessman’s family is currently investigating Kakiashvili’s work worldwide and as it is noted in the announcement, they have already collected number of evidences about Kakiahsvili abusing his authority.
“The documents at Kakishvili’s hand, which he uses as an argument in Georgian court, are very suspicious: Kakiashvili declares that by signing the papers Badri Patarkatsishvili gave Kakiashvili legal right to manage his assets and business. Witnesses, who allegedly attended the process of drawing up the papers by Patarkatsishvili, testify that such a thing has never happened and couldn’t have happened either. Additionally, an independent examination of the documents hasn’t been held; Kakiashvili, despite the demand of the New-York Court, hasn’t yet presented the original papers to anyone. Georgian court received only incomplete copies of photos out of the documents. Unfortunately, these unverified “evidence” turned out to be acceptable for the Georgian court,” – it is written in the announcement of Patarkatsishvili’s family. Interests of the Patarkatsishvilis will be defended by a group of lawyers, headed by Lord Goldsmith, former prosecutor general of Britain, as well as the council of international business-consultants.
Source: Media.Ge; May 2008
Georgia-Russia Fight Moves to Security Council
May 30, 2008
Although a United Nations report confirmed this week that the Russian air force shot down a Georgian reconnaissance drone flying over a breakaway region of the republic, Russia is planning to tell the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the unmanned flight violated a cease-fire agreement.
The conflict between Georgia and the Russian-backed rebels of Abkhazia has become one of Europe’s most worrisome flash points, and a theater in which Russia and the West have squared off. Top Georgian officials have requested several Security Council meetings in recent months to air their complaints about violations of a 1994 separation of forces pact known as the Moscow Agreement.
At a private gathering Friday, council members are expected to discuss the finding of Tuesday’s report by the U.N. observer mission in Georgia. Based on the drone’s photographic evidence, radar data, and eyewitnesses, the report determined that a Russian air force MiG-29 or Su-27 shot down the Israeli-made Georgian Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle over Abkhaz territory on April 20.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, yesterday called the report’s conclusions “conjectures.” The only factual finding, he told reporters, was Georgia’s breach of the Moscow Agreement.
“To try to make some political mileage, as I understand our Georgian friends and colleagues are trying to do, on the basis of conjectures on that report, and at the same time rejecting the only statement of fact in that report, to me is rather shaky ground to start one’s presentation at the Security Council,” the ambassador said.
The U.N. report stated that Russia itself acted in a manner that was “fundamentally inconsistent” with the Moscow Agreement and that such an act “undercuts the ceasefire and separation of forces regime.” Mr. Churkin dismissed as an “observation” the report’s finding that “over-flight of the zone of conflict by surveillance aircraft constitutes a breach” of the agreement.
That last determination, however, is disputed by European countries. “We don’t consider [such] flights to be a breach,” France’s U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, told reporters yesterday.
Source: NY Sun; May 2008
Blast Injures Four in South Ossetia- May 29, VIDEO
May 30, 2008
Source: Russia Today; May 2008
European Union Ambassadors Arrive in Abkhazia
May 30, 2008
A delegation of ambassadors of 15 countries of the European Union arrives in Abkhazia for a two-day visit.
It includes France, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden, the chief of the Foreign Ministry’s protocol of the non-recognized republic, Asida Inapshma told ITAR-TASS.
She said the delegation also includes the German consul, the Polish embassy’s second secretary, Estonia’s deputy ambassador and the first secretary of the European Commission’s delegation in Georgia.
Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba told reporters that the “diplomats are going to discuss with the republic’s leadership activating the negotiation process”.
“We plan discussing a wide range of matters connected with the situation in the area of the Georgian-Abkhazian standoff,” he said.
“We once and for ever decided to build our independent state, and nobody will make us turn away from this path, including the European Union,” Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh told a news conference in Sukhumi on Thursday.
“We shall try to explain to the ambassadors our stance, which consists in that Abkhazia has chosen its path, has determined with whom to build its relations, how to live and for what to strive,” the president said.
He said “it will be repeatedly stated during the visit of the EU ambassadors that the policy of Abkhazia’s leadership is not aggressive, and the continuation of the peace dialogue is possible if Georgia fulfills the 1994 Moscow agreement on a ceasecefire and disengagement of forces”.
“For the negotiations to resume, Georgia must withdraw all its armed units from the upper part of the Kodori Gorge and sign a agreement on peace and non-resumption of military actions,” Bagapsh said.
“It is up to Georgia where it is and with whom and which alliances to join. And we shall decide how we exist and how we build military, economic and political components,” he said.
The Georgian-Abkhazian negotiations broke in July of 2006 when Georgia moved military units into the upper Kodori Gorge.
According to the Moscow agreement, the territory of the gorge is a demilitarized area.
Surce: Itar-Tass; May 2008
Georgia Faces Internal and External Crises After Parliamentary Election Results
May 30, 2008
Georgia is simultaneously facing internal and external pressures. Tens of thousands of opposition demonstrators marched through the capital city of Tbilisi earlier this week to protest final parliamentary election results they say unfairly favor the ruling party of President Mikhail Saakashvili. At the same time, Georgia is now demanding that Russia apologize for shooting down an unmanned Georgian drone over the breakaway region of Abkhazia last month, while Moscow denies any involvement.
The democratic credentials of President Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer, have been under scrutiny since he used riot police to crush protests last November. The opposition says he rigged both the presidential election in January and the parliamentary elections in May. But David Nikuradze, Washington correspondent for the independent Georgian broadcasting company Rustavi 2, says it will not be clear what really happened, at least until election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issue their final report on the May elections in a week or two. Speaking with host Judith Latham of VOA News Now’s International Press Club, Mr. Nikuradze says he was not surprised that the ruling party won 120 out of 150 parliamentary seats because the economy has improved in recent years.
But VOA Moscow correspondent Peter Fedynsky notes that the international observers did not make a definitive judgment on the opposition’s allegation of rigged elections. Still, leaders of the main opposition group say they will boycott the new parliament and have refused to take the 16 seats they won in last week’s vote. Mr. Fedynsky says the opposition wants to “flat out close down parliament.”
Meanwhile tensions have escalated between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. At the end of the Soviet period and beginning of the period of Georgian independence, both regions rebelled against the Central Georgian government and became de facto independent entities under the protection of the Russians. Since 1994 there has been a cease-fire. The cease-fire agreement permits Russian peacekeepers to enter Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But the presence of Russian troops in the two regions is a major source of tension between Moscow and Tbilisi. In late April, an unmanned Georgian reconnaissance plane was shot down over Abkhazia, further intensifying those tensions. U.N. investigators released a report Monday saying that radar records showed a military aircraft headed back into Russian airspace after the shoot-down. Peter Fedynsky suggests that the current strain reflects a long-term regional pattern. For the past couple of centuries, he says, there have been wars in the Caucasus involving Russia and the indigenous peoples there – the Georgians, the Abkhazians, the South Ossetians, the Chechens, and others. As a result, he says there are a “lot of little independent-minded ethnic groups” that would like independence. Granting such desires, he concludes, would fracture the Russian Federation.
Igor Zevelev, Washington bureau chief for RIA Novosti Russian News and Information Agency, says that Russian-Georgian relations have hit a “new low.” The situation is difficult because it is not only about Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but it is also about NATO, the United States, and Europe. Mr. Zevelev says Georgia accuses Russia of not being neutral as a peacekeeper, but being on the side of the breakaway regions. He says the situation is complicated by the acrimonious relationship between President Saakashvili and former Russian president Vladimir Putin, who now serves as prime minister. The Russian media are reporting that President Saakashvili and newly elected Russian President Dmitri Medvedev will meet in St. Petersburg in early June. Igor Zevelev says that, although there is hope when new leaders meet that relations will improve, he doubts that will be the case this time.
Tensions between the two nations are not likely to subside. Georgia is now asking the U.N. Security Council to convene a meeting to discuss the shooting down of its unmanned reconnaissance aircraft over Akkhazia. Georgia is also demanding an apology from Russia and says it wants compensation. Continued violence adds to the tensions. On Thursday, nine people were injured in two attacks in South Ossetia – one by a car bomb blast in the capital city of Tskhinvali and the other in a mortar attack in the region’s southern Znauri district.
Source: VOA; May 2008
Georgian Opposition Plans Boycott: Political Standoff Continues as Opposition Plans to Boycott New Parliament
May 30, 2008
Several of the opposition parties which won seats in Georgia’s new parliament are planning to boycott the legislature, alleging that the May 21 parliamentary election was rigged against them.
With the governing National Movement party set to receive 120 out of the 150 seats, according to official results, the confrontation between the authorities and the opposition looks set to continue.
President Mikheil Saakashvili, who said he was surprised by the scale of the victory achieved by his National Movement, said he hoped “the parliament won’t be left without representatives of the opposition”.
The nine-party coalition United Opposition and the Labour Party, which received 17.7 and 7.4 per cent of the vote, respectively, announced they would not be taking up their seats at a mass opposition rally in Tbilisi on May 26. Tens of thousands of people attended the rally.
“We don’t recognise the results of a poll that was rigged by the authorities,” said United Opposition leader David Gamkrelidze.
Most of the parties involved then signed a memorandum proposing the creation of an “alternative parliament”.
However, there are some dissenters from the plan. Paata Davitaia, leader of the “We Ourselves” party, said he would support a boycott of the official parliament, but could not support the idea of an alternative.
“We already had these kinds of parallel structures in the early Nineties, and that led the country to civil war,” he said. “I can’t take responsibility for processes like this.”
Giorgi Targamadze, leader of the Christian Democratic Movement, has asked for more time to consider his options. “We will take our decision regarding the opposition memorandum in a few days’ time,” said Targamadze. “Our party won’t remain in parliament alone with the National Movement But we also need to clarify issues regarding the alternative parliament.”
No one has yet said exactly what structure and functions the new body might have. The alternative parliament is supposed to start work in the second half of June, and will be housed in the offices of the New Rights movement. The post of speaker of the opposition parliament will be given to David Gamkrelidze, who was second on the United Opposition’s party list.
The opposition is also planning to hold a protest rally outside the Georgian parliament on June 10, two days after the final results of the election are due.
A final verdict on the parliamentary election has not yet been delivered either by international or local monitors.
A preliminary report by international monitors said that “overall, voting was assessed positively by the large majority of [international] observers.” But it recorded a number of concerns, including inaccurate voters’ lists, suspiciously high numbers of “mobile voters”, intimidation of election observers and proxies. The report ended by saying, “Counting was assessed less positively, with significant procedural shortcomings observed, as was tabulation.”
A local non-governmental organisation, Fair Elections, which has yet to release its final report, conducted a parallel count which broadly corresponded to the official results. But Eka Siradze, director of the organisation, told IWPR that they were worried by several aspects of the election - for example, more voters than had actually been registered cast their votes in mobile ballot boxes.
“Our observers recorded cases of voters being put under pressure, and of observers, including our own, being put under pressure,” she said. “We will soon publish a detailed report on this, but we can’t say for definite how this influenced the parallel vote count which we conducted.”
The fact that the National Movement won an overwhelming 71 of the 75 seats elected by the first-past-the post system has also raised eyebrows.
Political analyst Ramaz Sakvarelidze said the party chose a lot of businessmen as its candidates in these constituencies.
“These businessmen promised people quite specific things - for example that a factory would be built in their region, jobs created and so on,” said Sakvarelidze. “These businessmen also spent much more money during the election campaign.”
The authorities have said that the new parliament will begin working whatever the opposition does.
Political analyst David Darchiashvili, elected as a National Movement member of parliament, said the opposition had no good evidence to support allegations poll rigging.
“The results of the 21 May election are a good indication of what society’s general mood is,” he said. “It’s true that the results in a number of polling stations where gross violations were observed have been annulled, and more results may still be annulled, but there’s no chance of any significant changes.”
Mikheil Machavariani, deputy speaker of the outgoing parliament, warned that the opposition boycott could pitch the country into a new and “fatal” confrontation, and said the National Movement was prepared to make significant concessions to prevent this.
“Although we have a constitutional majority in this parliament, we are ready to give up important levers of power to the opposition, including the positions of heads of parliamentary committees,” he said.
Archil Gegeshidze, an expert with the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, said the authorities’ crushing victory paradoxically left them in a quandary.
“I think that the authorities themselves did not want or expect a result like this,” he said. “The results were ensured in advance, independently of them, by the state machine that was up and running as soon as the elections started. These results are a challenge to the authorities, who are now at a loss and don’t know what to do.”
Gegeshidze said that he could not see how an alternative parliament could be effective.
Kakha Gogolashvili, another political analyst, described the election results as “absolutely logical”. “I think the opposition is again adopting the wrong tactics by organising an alternative parliament,” he said. “The election showed that a large part of the society won’t back tough actions like this. Besides, it’s obvious that the opposition has lost some of its support since the November events [when police broke up opposition protests] and the presidential election.”
One statistic should worry both government and opposition - the fact that there was a very low turnout of just 52 per cent. In Tbilisi alone, around 100,000 fewer voters came to the polls than in the presidential election in January.
Analyst Gia Khukhashvili said one reason turnout was low that the opposition had failed to mobilise voters and to stay united. It had also alienated people by calling for protests without explaining the reason for them, he said.
“But that still doesn’t mean we can say the election results are an accurate reflection of the mood of society,” he said. “It’s just that the authorities were able to mobilise their supporters and the opposition wasn’t. But [the mass protests on] May 26 showed that the opposition fire has not gone out amongst people.”
Sakvarelidze said Georgian society remained strongly polarised. He said, “On the one hand the opposition’s new initiatives are doomed to failure - they are losing their parliamentary platform. On the other hand, they are winning back the hearts of those who are unhappy with the authorities.” .
Source: IWPR; May 2008
U.N. to Discuss Georgia Spy Plane Crisis
May 30, 2008
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council plans to discuss on Friday Georgia’s accusation that Russia shot down its reconnaissance plane over the breakaway territory of Abkhazia.
The Georgian drone was shot down on April 20 and a video it transmitted before being destroyed shows a fighter jet firing a missile at it. U.N. observers said in a recent report the plane was shot down by a Russian fighter — the latest incident to raise the tensions between the Moscow and Tbilisi.
Georgia, which asked for the Security Council meeting, has protested the incident in a letter to Russia and asked Moscow to pay for the drone. Russia has criticized the U.N.’s findings and denied one of its planes downed the drone.
Abkhazian officials have claimed their own forces shot it down, though the U.N.’s evidence appears to contradict that claim.
The ex-Soviet republics’ ties have been badly strained by Georgia’s efforts to join NATO and Russia’s increasing support for Abkhazia.
That territory and another, South Ossetia, have been under separatist control since the 1990s. They seek either independence from Georgia or absorption into Russia.
Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council with veto power, initially wanted Abkhazian representatives present at any meeting to discuss the incident, but in the end agreed to one without the separatists.
Holy relics of St. Andrew brought to Georgia
May 30, 2008
Relics of Saint Andrew the First-Called will be brought to Georgia today. The decision was blessed by the Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II and the delegation of Georgian Orthodox Church arrived in Odesa in this regard. The holy parts of the aplostle are held in the Church of Mary Virgin in Odessa.
Worshippers and the religious authorities will greet the relics in Tbilisi airport at 18:00 today. The relics of Saint Andrew the-First-Called will remain in GEorgian untill 23 June and will be taken in almost every region of Georgia. Along with the relics of the Saint Andrew, the Icon of Saint Svimon will be also brought to Georgia and placed in the Trinity Cathedral.
www.rustavi2.com/news/news_text.php?id_news=26498&pg=1&im=main&ct=0&wth=
Source: Rustavi Broadcasting Co.; May 2008
After the Fight is Over
May 30, 2008
On the Election Day there was only one good news for the opposition in Tbilisi: Chelsea (that is considered to be a Russian team) lost the final.
Saakashvili’s party celebrated very modestly its convincing victory at the parliamentary election. Neither President himself, nor any large-scale festivities were noticed in the campaigning headquarters of the National Movement. No one was marching with cross-bearing flags along the nocturnal Tbilisi, like it was after presidential elections. Saakashvili’s supporters were watching the football final on TV, cheering up for Manchester (as Chelsea is considered to be a Russian club here).
Saakashvili himself made a short address the next day. He thanked the voters and said he had not expected such a convincing support. After that he went to Kiev to take part in the next summit.
Two days after the election his campaigning headquarters were deserted. Only David Bakradze, the number one in the party’s ticket and the future speaker at the parliament, was holding obligatory meetings with journalists.
Bakradze is the first among equals in the cohort of new people substituting some odious members of the party in power. The old entourage of Saakashvili was more distinctive, though they seemed to be a nightmare for people. As for the new ones, they all look alike.
David Bakradze is a typical young official of Saakashvili’s times. He’s well spoken of in the Georgian foreign office where he has worked several years. It is considered that a politician of this level must be featured with charisma. To tell the truth, I did not notice that. He did not wear tie to the meeting but the general impression was his attitude was rather formal.
Russian Peacekeepers Must Stay: Abkhazian President
May 30, 2008
The President of the Georgian breakaway republic of Abkhazia, Sergey Bagapsh, says the conflict zone on the border with Georgia can only be patrolled by Russian peacekeepers.
The statement comes in response to repeated Georgian demands for the withdrawal of Russian troops. Tbilisi says Moscow is no longer neutral in the dispute over the sovereignty of the region.
“The replacement of Russian and CIS peacekeepers in the conflict zone is out of the question, as they have been performing their duties with honour and dignity for years,” Bagapsh said.