Prime Minister: Corruption was not a 14-year problem - 2 years were critical - If today you present even one fact that a minister is involved in a corrupt deal, there will be an immediate reaction on the spot - No one has sacrificed Irakli Gharibashvili and he does not have the resources to sacrifice anyone

“Corruption was not a 14-year problem. You can recall other prime ministers; it took us a year and five months to fundamentally restructure the system. If today you present even one fact that any minister or other high-ranking official is involved in a corrupt deal, there will be an immediate reaction on the spot. At the lower level, of course, the fight against corruption must constantly continue,” Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists at a briefing held at the Government Administration.

According to him, corruption is not a 14-year problem, and neither during Giorgi Gakharia’s premiership was there talk of systemic corruption, nor during Mamuka Bakhtadze’s or Giorgi Kvirikashvili’s. When the problem appeared, the leader of the team made a statement that was implemented and this problem was systemically eliminated.

“Corruption was not a 14-year problem. You can recall other prime ministers; for example, with regard to Gakharia, there may have been one or two cases about which there was gossip that he arranged his own agricultural business, one in Samegrelo and the second in Shida Kartli, but this was in a small ‘Georgian-jiguli style,’ as he himself used to say. No one talks about systemic corruption in Gakharia’s period. Likewise, in Bakhtadze’s period no one talked about any corruption, nor in Kvirikashvili’s period is there talk of systemic corruption. Corruption reared its head and in this regard two years were critical, yet as soon as these problems were revealed, the leader of the team, Bidzina Ivanishvili, made a statement and returned to politics. Then we began to implement this statement and we did all of this very effectively. Even today I can repeat my simple offer: if you present even one fact that any minister or other high-ranking official is involved in a corrupt deal, there will be an immediate reaction on the spot. That is why we speak very boldly on this topic; our system is based on the fact that we completely cleansed the upper echelons of power of corruption. At the lower level, of course, the fight against corruption must constantly continue, but at the upper level the system is completely cleansed of corruption. This is a very heavy work process; it took us a year and five months to fundamentally restructure the system, yet today we can boldly speak about the fact that we take responsibility for any high-ranking official,” Kobakhidze stated.

As for the question about the letters of former Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, Kobakhidze noted that “no one has sacrificed Irakli Gharibashvili and he will not sacrifice anyone, because he does not have the resources for this.”

“Irakli Gharibashvili himself has neither been sacrificed by anyone nor does he have the resources to sacrifice anyone. I will once again repeat that neither his letters nor he himself is relevant, neither in the team nor in society. Corruption is very bad; that is all I can repeat. We were teammates and, unfortunately, the processes continued differently; it is very regrettable from a human point of view, the specific statements are also very regrettable, yet we must exhaust this issue,” Irakli Kobakhidze stated.