As a result of several measures carried out by the State Security Service in various regions of Georgia over the past day and a half, 29 people have been arrested and charged in 13 different criminal cases, - Lasha Maghradze, First Deputy Head of the State Security Service, said at the briefing held at the agency.

According to him, the so-called "middle-level corruption" remains a serious challenge.

“As a result of several measures carried out by the State Security Service in various regions of Georgia over the past day and a half, 29 people have been arrested and brought to justice in 13 different criminal cases.

First of all, we will tell you about the measure that was jointly carried out by the employees of the Counterintelligence and Special Operations Departments. As a result of processing operational information, two foreign citizens have been detained in Kutaisi while attempting to illegally purchase nuclear and radioactive substances. They were planning to illegally purchase nuclear material uranium and radioactive substance cesium 137 for three million US dollars and illegally transport it to the territory of another country. In order to implement the criminal plan, foreign citizens have been permanently arriving in Georgia in recent weeks and have been actively engaged in creating favorable conditions for the purchase/transportation of nuclear material and radioactive substances. We would like to explain to the public that, as a rule, the above-mentioned substances are used for various criminal, including terrorist purposes. The investigation is underway under Part 1 of Article 19-230 of the Criminal Code.

As a result of several anti-corruption measures carried out in parallel, 12 individuals were charged for the facts of illegal logging, negligence and abuse of official authority. Among them are former employees of the National Forestry Agency of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, Imereti Forestry Service. Also, a representative of the Martvili Forestry District, two individuals living in the same municipality, and a similar case is related to Vani Municipality, where 3 individuals were charged with fraud, production and use of fake official documents and illegal cutting of woody plants.

Also, the Anti-Corruption Agency arrested two people in Batumi and Lagodekhi municipalities for bribery. The Batumi case concerns the bribery of the head of one of the departments of the LLC "Sandasatvabe" in exchange for the removal of construction waste with trucks registered on the balance sheet of the aforementioned LLC, while in the Lagodekhi case, the mayor's representative in the village of Kabali, in exchange for a bribe, helped a citizen evade the punishment imposed by the court - community service. Five people were charged for the facts of illegally increasing the construction coefficient and unauthorized construction, in connection with the so-called K2 coefficients. Six individuals were charged for the illegal registration of state-owned land into private ownership, while two citizens were chargedfor the artificial adjustment of tender conditions, fraudulent appropriation of large amounts of state funds, and abuse of official authority.

As you can see, despite the unprecedented scale of the fight against corruption in recent months, the so-called "middle-level corruption" remains a serious challenge, which we naturally do not intend to tolerate. Therefore: 1. We call on all citizens who have any contact with such issues to cooperate with the investigative bodies and provide us with relevant information. 2. We warn people who still have a desire to abuse their position for material advantage that any fact of violation of the law will be revealed and will be followed by a corresponding strict legal response.

We can boldly declare that the current resources of the State Security Service are absolutely different. Due to the internal reforms, personnel changes, and improvement of material and technical resources carried out in recent months, the capabilities of the agency have been qualitatively strengthened.

The volume of incoming, processed, and realized operational information has increased approximately 24 times in the last six months alone, which indicates the strengthening of the analytical and operational capabilities of the State Security Service in such a way that our service, without any obstacles, can both conduct an irreconcilable and effective fight against corruption, as well as provide other preventive measures related to the country's security with high quality,” said Maghradze.