Revenue Service: Since the imposition of international sanctions, Georgia has fully complied with the established rules - another wave of baseless accusations against Georgia in this direction is another task/order

The Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance calls the information spread in the media about the “import of sanctioned fuel by ship into the port of Poti” disinformation and explains that “the ship and the company that owns the ship are not subject to international sanctions and it entered the country in full compliance with the legislation.”

The Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance has issued a statement regarding this, stating that since the imposition of international sanctions, Georgia has been fully complying with the established rules and strictly monitoring all types of customs operations at the border.

“Due to high public interest, we would like to provide the public with information regarding the television report prepared by the TV company Formula on June 7 of this year on the topic of the implementation of international sanctions, which represents yet another piece of disinformation and slander.

First of all, we would like to emphasize the fact that the aforementioned TV company applied to the Revenue Service in writing on June 4 of this year to receive an official explanation regarding the procedures for enforcing international sanctions. It should be noted that despite the provision of detailed explanatory information and the request from the agency to not change the content of the explanation, only a small fragment of the response was broadcast, not the full version.

In addition, it is important to emphasize once again that both the authors of the story and its respondent deliberately spread unsubstantiated accusations against one of the heads of the agency in the form of allegations.

As for the ship named in the story, as a result of customs formalities, it was proved that the ship and the company that owns the ship are not subject to international sanctions, therefore, it entered the country in full compliance with the legislation and the cargo was subject to the import procedure. Accordingly, the scheme described in the journalistic investigation is complete disinformation.

Since the imposition of international sanctions, Georgia has fully complied with the established rules and has been strictly monitoring all types of customs operations at the border. Obviously, another wave of baseless accusations against Georgia in the direction of enforcing international sanctions is another task/order and represents an attempt to implement political goals.

The Revenue Service calls on media outlets, when disseminating information on issues related to the enforcement of sanctions, to be guided by official/trustworthy/transparent sources, which have been repeatedly indicated/named by the agency itself.

As of today, 37 risk profiles are active in the Customs Administration, which automatically identify data on sanctions and initiate the detection of additional risk factors.

This process is carried out by highly qualified specialists who have been repeatedly trained by the countries imposing sanctions, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance, within the framework of customs control procedures, closely cooperates and is in constant communication with the competent agencies of the US and the European Union, as well as other partner countries, regarding the movement of sanctioned goods on the territory of Georgia, and they are constantly informed about the implementation of sanctions," reads the statement released by the Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance.