The Georgian General Prosecutor’s Office has questioned the veracity of tapes showing Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and Bera Ivanishvili, son of the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party and former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, forging vengeance on a local schoolboy who posted had negative comments on Bera’s Facebook page.
Shortly after the tapes aired, several other people shared similar stories about how Ivanishvili insulted and molested them. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)The recordings were first broadcast on opposition TV Pirveli in March, which claimed that the conversation took place in 2015-2016 and that the head of the Georgian State Security Service also took part in the discussion.
According to a statement released on June 18 by the prosecutor’s office, the recordings actually date from before the 2012 election of Ivanishvili, were significantly removed from their original version before being broadcast, and are a crime in themselves, as wiretapping is only allowed on 13 types of criminals Investigations such as drug trafficking and terrorism that the two were apparently not involved in.
In one recording, the two discuss going into the boy’s neighborhood and publicly humiliating him.
In another recorded conversation, Garibashvili comforted Bera by saying that in the presence of neighbors and acquaintances, the abusive student was mocked and insulted and was so scared that he dropped out of school.
In the conversations, both of them used extremely vulgar language about the schoolboy and his family.
However, a few days after the tape aired, Bera Ivanishvili spoke on pro-government Imedi TV and said the conversation was not new, it was from 2011 when he was a teenager and that he has no regrets.
“I am in the same position today and I will say live in your air that if someone curses my mother, it affects the family, which is the most holy place. I will ask for an answer from such a person today too,” he said . “Show me a Georgian who thinks differently about this subject.”
The Georgian opposition has claimed that Garibashvili and Ivanishvili’s actions against the boy were a crime that needs to be investigated and NGOs are awaiting explanations from the Prime Minister.
“As lawyers, we say that the prosecution’s failure to initiate an investigation directly means a declaration of disobedience to Georgian law and obedience to the ruling party,” said Kakha Kozhoridze, a member of the opposition Lelo party. “The party is not authorized to determine the facts, it should be determined by the public prosecutor.”
The schoolboy doesn’t seem the only one who has faced Bera’s anger. Shortly after the tapes aired, several other people shared similar stories about how Ivanishvili insulted and molested them.
Garibashvili called the case a provocation and accused his predecessor.
“We understand very well where and from whom this provocation came, that is [former president and opposition leader] The attempt by Mikheil Saakashvili, ”he said in March.
Georgia’s current Prime Minister, Irakli Garibashvili, has held several offices since Georgian Dream came to power with Elder Ivanishvili in October 2012.
This is not the first Bravery-related scandal that the Georgian Dream party has faced. Three years ago, a mayor of Marneuli, a southern Georgian city about 46 km from Tbilisi, was taped by the Georgian Dream-affiliated mayor forcing a local to wash his face with urine after the husband and wife of the mayor as also Bidzina had cursed Ivanishvili. The video gained widespread coverage on social media, resulting in the mayor’s arrest and dismissal.
