BMG has obtained legal assessment of TBC Bank Case by international legal company – Dentons. According to Georgian representative of Dentons, loans issued by TBC Bank in 2008 weren’t violating the law.
The assessment of Dentons reads:
“Based on the information that we had we conducted a legal expertise and came to conclusion that 194th article of the Criminal Code of Georgia, which covers unlawful legalization of funds, was not violated, because the notion about conflict of interests was not violated when issuing these loans for LLC “Samgori M” and LLC “Samgori Trade” in 2008."
However, the National Bank of Georgia says that these transactions were implemented by violating the regulatory norms about conflict of interests. That is why, NBG fined TBC Bank with 1 million GEL, seized the signature rights for Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze and requested their firing from supervisory board of the bank within next 2 months.
According to Khazaradze and Japaridze, TBC hasn’t violated any law. Badri Japaridze has previously stated that the money that the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia is arguing about was transferred to World Bank.
“it is very simple to end the discussion about this, 17 million USD that was taken as a loan was transferred to World Bank and into TBC Bank’s capital. You tell me if this can be counted as money laundering”, stated Badri Japaridze, deputy chair of TBC Bank’s supervisory board.
BMG was told by World Bank that in this case we are talking about International Financial Corporation (IFC), which is part of World Bank group and it works with financial sector.
Representative of IFC told BMG that “IFC cannot make the statement on an ongoing investigation. Please address these questions to according to institutions”.
“Orchestrated attack on TBC Bank, the aim of which is to take away our company“, if Khazaradze was not speaking openly at the press conferences before, he said everything he wanted now in an open letter to his employees.
In an online message Khazaradze says that the campaign against TBC Bank is directly linked to the politics and the willingness to take away this company. Khazaradze stated that this is an unprecedented attack from the side of the government agencies.
According to Khazaradze ongoing investigation is damaging the process of finalizing financial agreements on Anaklia port project.
Minister of Economy, Giorgi Kobulia on the other hand stated that these processes do not have influence on Anaklia project. As far as it is known, international donors have confirmed the funding for the first phase of the development of Anaklia project. 600 million USD is mobilized overall for the project.
