PM appoints new Justice and Finance Ministers
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Friday, April 2
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has appointed Lasha Khutsishvili as Minister of Finance and Rati Bregadze as Minister of Justice at the government meeting of April 1st .
Khutsishvili previously held the position of Deputy Finance Minister, while Bregadze was the Deputy Minister of Defence.
Namely, Khutsishvili, serving as Deputy Finance Minister since 2014, is also a member of the Steering Group of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. He served as Head of the Georgian Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance in 2013-2014. As a graduate of the Free University Business School (ESM) and the University of Preston, Khutsishvili worked in the Big Four, in the international company Ernst & Young Tbilisi office in the field of taxation and law from 2008 to 2013.
Khutsishvili will replace Ivane Matchavariani, who announced his resignation the previous day. Matchavariani did not name the reason for his resignation, but said that he had been planning to leave the post since the end of last year but decided to wait for several months until the 2021 'crisis budget' was approved and the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund were concluded.
Bregadze, currently Deputy Defense Minister, is also a professor of Public Law at the Caucasus University in Tbilisi. In 2017-2019, he was the Head of the Diaspora Relations Department of the Foreign Ministry. Having held a number of academic positions, he was also Deputy Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs from 2012 to 2015.
As for Lortkipanidze, he has made history by becoming the first Georgian judge at the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) for a 9-year tenure. Thus, his departure to Hague from the post has been anticipated since his election as an ICC judge.
