Press service of the Georgian Dream issues a statement regarding the article published by the “Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project” (OCCRP) about the founder and honorary chairman of the party.

“We would like to respond to the article published by the OCCRP about the Honorary Chairman of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili and his spouse, Ekaterine Khvedelidze. First of all, we note that the mentioned article is based on false information, and the facts, which Bidzina Ivanishvili already confirms, are presented as “sensation” and “scandalous story”. In particular, it is a complete lie that the honorary chairman of the ruling party bought some kind of property in the Russian Federation a few months ago. Spreading such lies without any evidence does not fit any kind of journalistic standards, it is not at all clear what is the goal of the authors of article. After 1998, the founder of Georgian Dream did not buy any property in Russia. Moreover, Bidzina Ivanishvili and none of his family members traveled to the Russian Federation after 1998.

As for another, manipulative part of the article built on lies - it is not a secret that for years Bidzina Ivanishvili worked in Russia and accumulated a large part of her assets in this country. In the property declaration filled out in 2013, he openly indicated that his wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, owned a house and 3 plots of land in the capital of Russia. Accordingly, the attempt to portray the information as a “scandal”, which has been public for 11 years and all of this is reflected in the declaration, indicates only one thing - the author of the article has an order to unhesitatingly spread incorrect information about Bidzina Ivanishvili and his family. We can consider this as a continuation of the 13-year hysteria, which a number of foreign and local radical opposition-controlled media have been continuously trying, however, in no case did they get the results they wanted. Since Bidzina Ivanishvili’s entry into politics, these people have been trying to find some kind of compromising fact, but they have never been able to come up with anything more than lies and lies, because there is no fact in nature that can exist against the honorable chairman of the ruling party and his family.

During the preparation of the article saturated with lies, its author, Kelly Bloss, communicated with the press service of the ruling party, although the questions they sent clearly indicated that there was no point in establishing a business relationship with them, and it was clear to us that the article aimed to spread false and manipulative information about Ivanishvili and his family.

Another important circumstance - at the admission level, if everything is exactly as it is written in the article, none of the false circumstances cited by the authors contain any violation of the law - neither the purchase of property nor its possession. However, we emphasize once again that after 1998, Bidzina Ivanishvili and his family were no longer visit the Russian Federation and didn’t purchase any kid of property.

The saddest part of this story is that the media spreading the article based on lies are funded by such organizations as the “Open Society Foundation” (Soros Foundation), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Swedish International Development Agency Cooperation Agency (SIDA), etc. We call on the author of the article and the media that employs him, as well as those organizations that finance propaganda based on lies, to refrain from circulating obvious lies next time, and donors to share responsibility for the spread of lies and to thoroughly review the issue of financing such media in the future”, - reads the statement.