Director and employee of burnt trade center released on bail
By Tea Mariamidze
Monday, July 31
Tbilisi City Court has released Giorgi Machavariani, director of the burnt shopping center Children’s World, on 50,000 Gel bail.
Moreover, another employee of the trade center, Malkhaz Tevzadze, was also released on bail for 10,000 Gel.
Both men were arrested by the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia (POG) on July 27 for a breach of fire safety regulations and negligence.
The POG says that the investigation conducted into the case revealed that due to the breach of fire safety regulations and negligence of officially responsible persons it was impossible for an adequate force of firefighters to localize the fire in the total area of the market and to extinguish it.
“Therefore, the fire spread over the total area of the market and reached the building of Children’s World, which caused devastation of the goods and goods stored in those buildings,” the statement of the POG reads.
Giorgi Machavariani is accused of violating fire safety regulations, while Malkhaz Tevzadze, an officer of internal security, is accused of negligence while performing his duties.
The Didube District trade center in Tbilisi, known as Children’s World, and its adjacent shops and a market, were burnt due to an extensive fire which broke out at the territory early morning on January 30, destroying the properties of about 1,000 vendors.
The building of the trade center was insured, however, the properties of the affected vendors were not, and so the traders suffered huge losses from the disaster.
In total, around 13,000 square meters were burnt and the trade center building will not be useable for the foreseeable future.
