The Georgian Parliament adopted the de-oligarchization bill in its first reading, with 80 votes in favour and nine against.
The draft legislation addresses several concerns, such as defining the term “oligarch,” identifying an oligarch and placing them on the relevant register, generating the aforesaid register, legal sanctions, and so on.
According to the proposal, an oligarch is someone with substantial financial and political weight in public life who meets at least three of the four criteria. The criteria are political engagement, considerable media influence, being the ultimate beneficiary of an enterprise with a dominant market position and possessing confirmed assets that exceed one million times the subsistence minimum for an able-bodied individual as of January 1 of the relevant year.
The Parliament decides who is considered an oligarch and maintains an appropriate registry. A person on the said register is prohibited from making donations from his funds, performing work, providing goods, services, or cash in support of political parties, making donations to the candidates’ election funds (except their own election funds), financing political parties during the election process, and being a buyer in the process of privatizing large-scale facilities.
