Representative of Georgian President’s Press Service was Detained for Espionage

Representative of Georgian President’s Press Service was Detained for Espionage
 

Georgian law enforcers detained a representative of Georgian President’s Press Service, Simon Kiladze (born in 1958) and charged him with espionage and treason.

Kiladze’s duties included monitoring of the various materials published by foreign media outlets.

At the march 28 briefing Minister of the Interior Vano Merabishvili said that Simon Kiladze had been systematically providing foreign special services with information about Georgian President, heads of executive and legislative branches of the Georgian authorities, official visits of state delegations, the issues that were discussed during those visits and other strategic pieces of information. Kiladze was sending this information through e-mail and international regular mail. Quite often he personally traveled abroad for divulging the aforementioned information.

According to the Minister, Kiladze got at least $20,000 for his “services” through official wire transfers; however, up to now Kiladze has been living in a rented one bedroom apartment with his family.

Merabishvili said that Kiladze would be prosecuted. He also said that the Ministry would continue working in order to define the channels that Kiladze used fro divulging information; however, the Minister refrained from naming the concrete country where Kiladze was sending the classified information.

Source: media.ge