It is up to the US Congress, the State Department and other US structures to ensure the transparency of the National Endowment for Democracy - this is the minimum standard of good faith giving! It is the first time in history when a donor threatens the state and the people that if they pass a law that makes their finances public, they will take some measures. Unfortunately, we have come to such an absurdity! - Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili told journalists about this.
Papuashvili told the media today that "radical groups and political parties are secretly financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy."
"When you come to the country, you spend money, you tell people that you are doing it for their benefit - be kind and tell people what you are doing for their benefit and what you spend it on. Instead, expenses and activities are covered. I spent a year with this fund trying to make the financing public. We were promised several times that they would make it public, the US Embassy was informed, but in the end, we saw that if they didn't make it public, we heard threats from this donor here.
Instead of acting in good faith and publicizing projects and funding, the "outbound" approach is to talk about what is FARA and what is not FARA. In the end, everyone found out well which law regulates what in which country, and everyone knows by heart that the law that the parliament is considering will not even come close to the American version in terms of its strictness and regulation.
When claims are made for Georgia under the conditions of having such a law, it is not convincing.
What prevents the appropriate fund of the USA from publicizing the projects - after all, it says that it is doing a good job. Let them say what this goodness is manifested in, what is the money spent on, why do they hide the goodness?! They can publicize it in five minutes - it doesn't take much. To lay the basis of the projects, what they finance and what they don't. If the money is spent for a good cause, everyone will see it and thank them - it seems that there is a lot to hide and that's why it is not made public", said Speaker of the Parliament Shalva Papuashvili to the media.
