There was a very clear hint from Bidzina Ivanishvili regarding corruption. It took a year and 5 months for the team and me, under Bidzina Ivanishvili’s leadership, to eradicate the issues embedded within the governance system. Such a statement made today the Prime Minister of Georgia.

“After I assumed the position of Prime Minister, there was an unmistakable directive from Mr Bidzina Ivanishvili concerning corruption. It took a year and 5 months for the team and me, under Bidzina Ivanishvili’s leadership, to eradicate the issues embedded within the governance system.

It took a year and 5 months for the entire team and for me personally to eliminate those accumulated problems. I will not comment further on this matter. Everyone should attend to their own issues. We identified specific failings, and it required 17 months to dismantle these fundamental governance flaws. The team achieved this following Bidzina Ivanishvili’s directive and explicit signal at the party congress.

We adopted this as our primary line of effort and pursued it to the very end. Within a year and 5 months, we succeeded in completely purging the system of these ingrained defects.

Operating from Parliament gives you one level of leverage, but when you head the administration, your scope of action is different. Even from the position of head of government, it took our team a year and 5 months, following Bidzina Ivanishvili’s directive, to thoroughly rid the system of these core issues. I emphasise who initiated this key mandate.

Bidzina Ivanishvili addressed the party congress, making a defining statement on corruption. A month later, I stepped into the role of Prime Minister, and under Bidzina Ivanishvili’s guidance, the team managed to liberate the system from those entrenched problems. Yet, even from the prime ministerial seat, let alone from parliament, it took a full 17 months to clean up these critical systemic failures”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.