Saba Tsitsikashvili, Gori
Who caused 230 GEL worth of damage to the property of Mr. Vano Vardzelashvili and spent four months in prison for it? The official documents gathered by the Gori office of the Human Rights Center demonstrate that this person scratched the bonnet of the former regional governor’s car by day in the town center. According to the information available, this person was cursing Mr. Vardzelashvili.
For several months, Gori’s Human Rights Center has been petitioning the city court of Gori to disclose the name of the individual charged with this crime.. Attempts to petition the Shida Kartli regional prosecutor’s office for this information has been unsuccessful thus far. The court replied to us that this information was considered confidential and that his name could not be made public without the consent of the individual.. The court insisted that we should be content with the encoded judgment. However, the Human Rights Center was not content with this response and we have appealed to the Gori district court. The response of the chairman was that that the chancellery of the court fairly encoded the judgment where the names of the prosecutor, attorney and the secretary are crossed.
The reply of the court does not clarify whether the court asked the convicted person to make his name secret. So, we still do not know the position of the convicted individual.
Initially, the Shida Kartli regional prosecutor’s office wrote to us that they had signed a plea-agreement with the detainee for the damages caused to the regional governor’s property and that we could learn details of the agreement at the court. We wrote to them again and requested them to provide us the name of the individual. However, the prosecutor’s office has yet to answer to our inquiry. . Further, the court and the prosecutor’s office did not tell us the name of the attorney who protected the convicted for the damage of Vardzelashvili’s car. We got in touch with several bar offices (offices of Zaza Gigauri, Maguli Gogoladze, etc) but nobody was able to provide any useful. The state bar office does not make public similar information due to the personal interests of their clients.
After our long attempt, we decided to publish the details of this strange story. We started working on this issue when Lado Vardzelashvili still occupied the position of the regional governor (currently he is Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs) and Davit Sakvarelidze was the regional prosecutor. When Vardzelashvili’s car was scratched, Sakvarelidze was head of the regional prosecutor’s office. They detained the suspect on December 24, 2008- two days after the incident occurred.
According to the judgment of the Gori district court dated April 14, 2009, we learned that during the day on December 22, 2008 a drunken person damaged the bonnet of the car near the Stalin Street # 10 in Gori. The car- a Toyota Prado, state number TOK 387- belonged to the administration of the regional governor in Gori, Kaspi, Kareli and Khashuri districts. According to report #S-246, the regional governor’s administration sustained damages of 230 GEL.
According to the bill of particulars of the prosecutor’s office, the individual committed a crime which is envisaged under Article 187 Part I of the Criminal Code of Georgia. This crime entails the deliberate cause of damage to another’s property which results in serious damage to that property.
The Shida Kartli regional governor was renting a flat in Stalin Street # 10 and the regional administration had signed an agreement with the owner for almost two years. As for the car, based on the instruction of Lado Vardzelashvili, the car was later assigned to the regional office of the Constitutional Security Department. The regional administration claims that the car was assigned to the department based on the petition of the Minister of Internal Affairs on July 10, 2010.
Based on the instructions given on December of 2008, Lado Vardzelashvili gave warrant to his driver Davit Sarauli to participate in the investigation process. The convict spent 6 months in prison. In April of 2009, the defense made a request to the prosecutor to sign a plea-agreement. The agreement was signed on April 14, 2009. According to the judgment the convicted was sentenced to three-years-imprisonment.
“The imprisonment started on December 24, 2008 and the remaining 2 years and 6 months will be used as a conditional sentence,” stated the verdict.
By the way, a technical mistake was made in the judgment: the convicted “cannot use” 2 years 6 months as a suspended sentence.
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