Georgian Parliament Speaker accuses UK Embassy of attempting to fund groups with “extremist agendas”

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Friday accused the United Kingdom Embassy in Tbilisi of attempting to fund organisations he described as having an “extremist agenda”.
Papuashvili’s comments came in response to the UK Embassy’s statement, which expressed concern over the freezing of bank accounts of seven non-governmental organisations, suggesting the action was politically motivated rather than a response to illegal activities.

“I would like to remind the public that just a few weeks ago, the UK Embassy attempted to provide funding to organisations with extremist agendas, specifically to Tamar Chergoleishvili’s partisan outlet Tabula and the radical organisation Academy of the Future, led by Gia Japaridze, the number five on the United National Movement [electoral] list. In both cases, the pretext for the funding attempt was supposedly to prepare journalistic material related to local elections and to monitor the elections. This, despite the fact that the stated goal of both entities is to disrupt the elections”, the Speaker said.

The Speaker called for transparency from the UK Embassy, urging it to clarify its funding decisions and disclose details of its financial support during the 2024 election period.

“This naturally raised a legitimate suspicion in society that the Embassy’s purpose might not have been to support the holding of municipal elections, but rather to strengthen financially those whose declared objective was the sabotage of elections”, he noted.

The Speaker said he had earlier called on the Embassy to be transparent, to explain why it had sought to fund “partisan, radical groups”, and to disclose all financial support provided during the 2024 elections.

“Traditionally, the Embassy left Georgian society’s questions and concerns unanswered. Instead, we received yet another unfriendly statement directed against the Georgian people”, Papuashvili concluded.