General Prosecutor of Georgia Archil Kbilashvili does not rule out that in the nearest period the public will learn about the disturbing facts that took place in the Defence Ministry in 2005-2012; namely, the facts of the massive loss of hundreds of millions of Lari.

It seems that the General Prosecutor’s Office and the General Inspection of Defence Ministry are actively examining the eight-year-long period of reign of Nationals’ cronies on the post of Defence Ministers. However, it is interesting to mention that the prosecution missed to include year 2004 in its investigations as the startup time for the Nationals’ rule when no less than three Defence Ministers happened to be appointed and quickly discharged in a matter of one year. Many suspect that the start of financial misdoings that ravaged the armed forces for all these years are connectted to the appointment of those people.
Remarkably, the entire funding for the Georgian Army back in 2004 came from Bidzina Ivanishvili, then the philanthropic businessman operating out of the political backstage. This information used to be kept in secret. At that time, to great consternation of Nationals’ leaders, the author of this article wrote twice that the businessman Ivanishvili was the source of massive funding of Georgian armed forces (such as monthly salaries for the militaries, money for tank and aviation fuel, etc.).
If the Prosecutors’ Office decides to unearth and examine the shady facts of 2004, most probably, they will come across many cases of rampant financial diversions perpetuated by the Ministry’s leadership behind the back of their lavish donor.
The investigation is bound to find facts of regular misuse of military budget for so called kickbacks during foreign arms purchases, casual violations of tender rules and so on. A few names of former and active senior ministry officials may surface in the process.
No less interesting would be a comprehensive scrutiny over a number of dubious details about the August 2008 war. For instance, one may wonder about the possible discrepancies in the weapons inventory of Georgian Army before and after the war, given the high probability of criminal whitewashing of illegal arms deals through false attribution of arms disappearances to arms loss or damage.
National Movement used to be proud of expanding Shevardnadze’s military budget of 60 million (2003) to staggering 1.5 billion in just five years, thus claiming to have enhanced the country’s defense capacity sky-high.
If the General Prosecutors’ Office proves that the eight-year period of Nationals’ rule in the ministry led to the emergence of a mind-boggling gap of hundreds of millions of Lari, there will be a huge scandal in the offing because former Authorities which used to boast about the increase of national military budget by 25 times, would prove to be the scrooges caring only for themselves.