The members of the Communications Commission unanimously elected Kakha Bekauri for the position of chairman for the third three-year term. Bekauri was the only candidate for the position.
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Kakha Bekauri has been the head of the Communications Commission, the regulatory body in the fields of broadcasting and electronic communications, since May 2017. The Parliament of Georgia elected him as a member of the Commission for the first time in 2014, and for the second time in 2019.
The Communications Commission consists of five members elected for six-year terms. Any member of the commission has the right to register as a candidate for the chairman position, regardless of the remaining term of office. According to the internal regulations valid until 2019, it was not allowed to elect the same person as the chairman for more than one term. At the end of 2019, the regulation was amended and the restriction was canceled. Vakhtang Abashidze, Natia Kukuladze, Ekaterine Imadedze, Ivane Makharadze, and Kakha Bekauri are current members of the commission.
Local non-governmental organizations working on media issues often criticize the Communications Commission for its decisions against opposition media and accuse it of serving the interests of the ruling party.
On August 23 of last year, the Commission satisfied the Georgian Dream party request and fined Mtavari TV with 118,689 GEL for broadcasting an advertising clip of the Home to Europe campaign. By the same decision, a sanction (warning) was imposed on TV companies Formula and TV Pirveli.
Before becoming a member of the Communications Commission, in 2012, for 9 months Kakha Bekauri was the director of the TV channel TV9 belonging to the family of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of Georgian Dream. His wife, journalist Eka Beridze, worked in the same television station, and now she is the communications director of Georgian Water and Power LLC.
Kakha Bekauri is one of the highest-paid civil servants in Georgia. According to property declarations, from 2014 to 2020, as a member of the Communications Commission, he received 1,564,262 GEL as his salary. In addition, Bekauri is also involved in commercial activities and owns 33.33% of the share of Ori Nabiji LLC. In 2020, he received 4,299,570 GEL as income from Ori Nabiji.
