Imedi TV, Georgia
Oct 12 2007

NGO accuses Georgian president's uncle of dubious deals

[Presenter] Freedom Institute [NGO] has accused [Georgian] President
[Mikheil Saakashvili's] uncle Temur Alasania of corrupt deals.
Members of the NGO devoted a special meeting to this issue. [News
programme] Kronika's correspondent Tea Sichinava attended the
briefing. She is live on the air now. Tea, what specific accusation
is at issue?

[Correspondent] The Georgian president's uncle Temur Alasania has
invested money in the gold business with former Russian Energy
Minister Sergey Generalov's support and money on the territory
disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Freedom Institute member Levan
Gogichaishvili submitted this information some time ago referring to
an article by John Helmer. We were told here that John Helmer is an
expert who was previously Jimmy Carter's assistant. This article
provides quite a lot of details of the situation in Armenia around
one of the gold companies and mentions Temur Alasania and Sergey
Generalov together. Levan Gogichaishvili has described this as double
standards, which he said has angered Azerbaijan most of all. He also
noted that the current events have the same overtones for Azerbaijan
as the inflow of Russian capital into Nagornyy Karabakh and Russian
investments in Abkhazia for the Georgians.( Read more... )