Transparency International – Georgia is calling on the Ministry of Finance to fully disclose how the funds allocated from the government's reserve fund for the organization of the funeral of Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia, were spent.

“In March 2026, the Ministry of Culture was allocated 3 million GEL from the government's reserve fund to organize the funeral of the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Ilia II. The ministry has disclosed no information on how the money was spent, has published no details about the contractors, and is not responding to journalists' requests for information. Suspicions are reinforced by the questions that already surrounded the culture minister of the time and that remain unanswered — questions arising from her work, before she took office, at a private company engaged in event organization. The issue was the subject of a report on "Nodar Meladze's Shabati" (TV Pirveli), broadcast on 12 September. Transparency International Georgia has reviewed the publicly available documents.

On 20 March, for the organization of the funeral ceremony of the Catholicos-Patriarch, the government allocated a total of 5.59 million GEL from the reserve fund to six agencies, including 3 million GEL to the Ministry of Culture. According to the Ministry of Finance's state budget execution reports, the Ministry of Culture spent only 722.6 thousand GEL of that amount. After the funeral ceremony, on 8 May, the government amended the ordinance on the allocation of funds from the reserve fund, brought it into line with the actual expenditure, and reduced the allocated amounts. Under the new ordinance, the amount allocated to the Ministry of Culture was cut to exactly 722.6 thousand GEL, and the package as a whole to 2.56 million GEL.

It is not public what part of the 722.6 thousand GEL the Ministry of Culture spent through contractors, which companies received the contracts, for what services, in what amounts, and on what basis they were selected. Nor is it known how the other five agencies spent their shares. The table below shows the amounts actually disbursed from the state budget, by agency.

In the two years before her appointment as minister, Tinatin Rukhadze received 410,000 GEL while working as a consultant for LLC Tikharti. This is a company engaged in event organization, which has received state contracts worth 3.8 million GEL through simplified procurement without ever having taken part in a competitive tender. In July, Rukhadze left the post of minister without answering these legitimate questions about her. The money from the reserve fund was allocated precisely for the organization of an event — which is exactly the field in which the company linked to the minister operates. The question therefore arises whether the ministry paid money to a company financially linked to the minister, which in this context would be an act bearing the signs of a corruption offense.

Under the law, procurement financed from the government's reserve fund remains outside the public procurement system: it requires neither competition nor publication. This provision of the law does serious damage to public control over budget spending and creates corruption risks. In 2023, the government itself acknowledged the problem (within the Open Government Partnership (OGP)) and undertook a commitment that by the end of 2024 the proactive publication of this information would become mandatory. The government has not fulfilled that commitment. In addition, according to TV Pirveli, the Ministry of Culture has left two requests for public information about this spending unanswered. As a result, how the money allocated for the funeral ceremony of the Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia was spent remains entirely hidden from the public.

The Ministry of Culture and the other agencies should publish, on their own initiative, the contracts concluded in the course of spending this allocation, the criteria by which the suppliers were selected, and other details. The Ministry of Culture should also stop breaking the law and provide journalists with the public information they have requested. Over the years, concealing the spending of such sensitive public funds has become a hallmark of the Ivanishvili regime, and it only deepens the suspicions that exist in society”, reads the information released by the organization.