Ivanishvili to wait three months for citizenship decision

The Chair of the Public Registry Agency, Giorgi Vashadze, has announced that Georgian Dream leader Bidzina Ivanishvili will receive an answer regarding the re-instatement of his Georgian citizenship within three months.

According to Ivanishvili’s lawyers, the response period for the Agency has already expired. "We addressed the Civil Registry Agency regarding granting Bidzina Ivanishvili's citizenship through naturalization on January 5. Either a negative or a positive report should have been prepared within 40 days. We are demanding a written report from the Civil Registry Agency," said lawyer Zakaria Kutsnashvili.

Ivanishvili renounced both his French and Russian citizenships in the hopes of having his Georgian citizenship restored. “I call on Georgia’s official structures to grant me Georgian citizenship as I now don’t have a passport from any country. I was born in Georgia, I live here, and they don’t have any right to refuse me,” he asserted.

According to European conventions, a person who gives up the citizenship of any European country should not be left entirely without citizenship. France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will wait until Ivanishvili's Georgian citizenship is re-instated; only then will they annul his French residency.