Mayor Kaladze denies Soso Gogashvili's accusations that Gov't has ties with Federal Security Service of Russia
By Liza Mchedlidze
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze has responded to Soso Gogashvili's claims that Georgian high-ranking officials and representatives of special services of Georgia met with the representatives of Russian Security Service, assessing it as 'complete nonsense' and 'absurdity'. Mayor also said that the evidence for the mentioned information does not exist.
"If there were evidence of this, of course, an appropriate response would follow. Any person can make announcements. These statements are based on nonsense and nothing, so it means nothing. You can also make any statement, you are a representative of television, appear on television, use your platform, say something stupid, and it does not mean that the relevant agencies will start an investigation. There is a state for that," Mayor Kaladze said.
The former deputy head of the Security Service, Soso Gogashvili, described the scheme by which, according to him, air, land and sea transport are used to bypass sanctions, with the coordination of the Georgian and Russian special services. According to Gogashvili, this system still works properly and when any cargo is to be transported, reports are sent to the patrol police and the customs department so that they are not checked, and sometimes the cargo passes without being fixed at the border.
According to Gogashvili, this system still works properly and when any cargo is to be transported, reports are sent to the patrol police and the customs department so that they are not checked, and sometimes the cargo passes without being fixed at the border. According to him, Grigol Liluashvili, the head of the Security Service, is in charge of coordination now, who is communicating through reliable officers.
Soso Gogashvili also talked about how this scheme was organized. According to him, in 2016, on the instructions of the founder of "Georgian Dream", Bidzina Ivanishvili, he was at the secret base of the Federal Security Service of Russia in Vladikavkaz, where he met General Sedov of "FSS".
"The purpose of the meeting was to organize the relationship of lower-level allied officers, to select suitable reliable persons, to connect them with each other, as well as to provide safe corridors for illegal and smuggled goods, to grant Georgian citizenship to Russian citizens on their recommendation, business start-up assistance, as well as illegal transfer of Russian citizens in Georgia, who were not wanted persons and were wanted, to Russia. Then, as planned, a meeting of our seniors was scheduled, which took place in the same city and lasted for 3 hours. I was not at this meeting, my boss, Vakhtang Gomelauri, left by car first, but there was a delay on the road due to falling snow and he turned back, he called me from the road and through Nino Giorgobiani, I prepared for "Airzena" a plane - "Boeing 737" for charter, and the flight took place. "The board could not land the first time and made several circles to land at the Vladikavkaz airport," Gogashvili said.
According to Gogashvili, after these meetings, in November 2017, Georgia hosted two Generals of Federal Security Service of Russia - Sedov and Beseda, and in December, the Georgian side was in Minsk by official invitation, where Vakhtang Gomelauri and Bortnikov met once again.
