The Georgian government has refused to publish the report of the fifth assessment round of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), Transparency International – Georgia said on April 26, calling on the Anti-Corruption Bureau to release the report to the public. This has been denied by the Anti-Corruption Bureau and by the Prime Minister himself.

TI-Georgia stresses in its statement that the implementation of GRECO’s recommendations is part of Georgia’s European integration process and, referring to the Venice Commission’s recommendation, the watchdog adds that it is also part of de-oligarchization process.

“We are facing a dangerous and alarming tendency that the Georgian government refuses to participate in the process of monitoring the anti-corruption environment and/or to publish the assessment [report],” the watchdog says.

The statement slams the Georgian government for withdrawing last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Anti-Corruption Network (OECD/ACN) monitoring, while stressing that “the European Commission is directly calling on us to rejoin the OECD/ACN monitoring process.”

TI-Georgia notes that the CoE may allow the country not to publish the assessment reports, although such exceptions, generally take place in countries where the corruption is a particularly serious problem.

The watchdog calls on the Georgian Anti-Corruption Bureau, which was a coordinating body for the fifth round of GRECO monitoring, to immediately publish the assessment report and to join the OECD/ACN monitoring process as recommended by the European Commission.

Anti-Corruption Bureau Denies TI-Georgia’s Allegations

On the same day, April 26, the Georgian Anti-Corruption Bureau issued a response statement, saying that the information claimed by the watchdog, as if the Georgian government is hiding the GRECO anti-corruption assessment report, “is a lie”, and the only reason why the report has not yet been published is that it is being translated in Georgian.

In its statement, the Bureau referred to Georgia’s fifth round assessment report and the second addendum to the fourth round second compliance report, both of which were adopted at the 96th plenary session of GRECO.

Citing GRECO regulations, the Bureau said that “all stages of the evaluation process are confidential, unless the country ensures the publication of the document translated into the native language.” It added: “Until the translation is completed and published, the status of each of these reports remains ‘confidential’ under GRECO rules.”

The statement noted that translating the reports “requires a reasonable amount of time” given their volume, and that is why they are still unpublished and confidential.

The Bureau added that it has “immediately” started translating the reports and that once the process is completed, it will publish them on the official websites of both the Bureau and GRECO.

In addition to the statement of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Kobakhidze also today, April 26, while speaking with journalists said that TI-Georgia reported a lie. According to him, the Georgian government has already committed to the Council of Europe to publish the report as soon as it is translated.

“This lie [about the GRECO assessment report] was spread by Transparency International [Georgia], which in fact should be called National Obscurity, that is, the complete opposite of what it is called.” PM Kobakhidze said, adding that it is just “a matter of days” before the report is published.