"Obviously, something like that is concerning and in Georgia, there are people who do follow that to keep the public informed. It’s a very important role both of the media and some civil society organizations to help the public be aware of transactions like that that are important to Georgia and should be done in a transparent fashion. Russian occupations of 20 percent of your territory is a constant reminder that Russia is not to be trusted”- said US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan in an interview with ‘’Sakartvelos Ambebi” regarding the transfer of 104,712 hectares of forest in Racha and Kvemo Svaneti to Davit Khidasheli for 49 years.
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Its been two months of the war in Ukraine, when the Georgian government ordered Davit Khidasheli, the former vice-president of the largest Russian corporation SISTEMA, who is a partner of Vladimir Yevtushenkov, a Russian oligarch close to Putin, sanctioned by Ukraine and Great Britain, to border the territories occupied by Russia, almost 105 thousand hectares of forest. They gave it for half a century.
The government kept these decisions secret and has not made them completely public yet. 9 months ago online publication Mtis Ambebi and the association Green Alternative filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture to provide public information fully. The judge has not started considering the case yet. The Georgian government and the National Environment Agency's decision, by which Davit Khidasheli's company was given the license to set up the forests and hunting farm there, are being appealed to the court. According to the license conditions, Khidasheli must bring back and breed noble deer and Caucasian domba in this region. In the forest tourism infrastructure for various purposes should be built. Khidasheli paid 1,151,832 GEL as a license fee, 11 GEL per hectare (58.7 GEL with investment obligation).
"I think that Georgians' experience with Russia is the history of being very careful and understanding that many things are said and very few pledges are fulfilled. They have not fulfilled obligations under the 2008 treaty, just as they failed to fulfill many other pledges over the centuries. What is very important is to continue to support Georgia’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity and to peacefully restore that territorial integrity,"- noted Degnan.
David Khidasheli is the main character of the so-called Cartographers’ Case. Before the 2020 parliamentary elections, the Prosecutor’s Office arrested Iveri Melashvili, former head of the Service of Georgian State Border Delimitation, Demarcation and Border Relations of the Department of Neighboring Countries at the Foreign Ministry, as well as Natalia Ilychova, chief inspector of the Land Border Defense Department of the Border Police. In January 2021, the leader of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili while being on air on Georgian public broadcaster thanked Khidasheli for transferring the maps with which, according to Ivanishvili’s words, he "saved David Gareja, the most important monument of Georgian culture, from being cut in half". Irakli Gharibashvili accused Melashvili and Ilychova of treason as if they agreed on the border of Georgia in favor of Azerbaijan. The discussion of the "Cartographers’ case" is still ongoing in the court.
