Law of 29 May 2024 No. 4212-XIV RS-HMP “On Amendments to Law of Georgia of 17 October 1997 No. 982 “On Countering Corruption” (კორუფციის წინააღმდეგ ბრძოლის შესახებ“ საქართველოს კანონში ცვლილების შეტანის თაობაზე) provides, in particular, for the following novelties:

1. Anti-Corruption Bureau

The Expansion of the powers of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ანტიკორუფციული ბიურო, hereinafter, the Bureau) is a key reform.

Now its functions include, among other things:

• Provide legal and/or psychological assistance to whistleblowers;
• Forward the information, including the documents and other evidence provided by whistleblowers, to the persons authorised to investigate into the facts disclosed;
• Develop and implement the programmes on ethics, promotion of principles of integrity and enhanced transparency in the civil service, analyse compliance with the standards of conduct by public officials and formulate relevant recommendations.

In implementing its functions, the Bureau can ask public bodies and other subjects of the public sector, legal persons of the private sector, natural persons to provide necessary information, including:

• Personal data, including special categories of personal data (for example, information on health, political and religious beliefs, membership in trade unions etc.);
• Information constituting a secret protected by the law except for the state secret.

The head of the Bureau is granted parliamentary immunity providing him/her with the immunity against court proceedings and/or criminal prosecution, as well as the arrest, detention and searches with no consent of Parliament.

Additionally, the Law abolishes the Interagency Anti-Corruption Council that exercised control over the activities of the Bureau together with Georgia’s Parliament.

2. Declaration of assets

A number of amendments were made to the rules regulating declaration of assets.

In the first place, the Law increases the minimal sum of cash subject to declaration from 4,000 GEL (roughly 1,500 USD) to 10,000 (around 3,700 USD).

In the second place, the procedure for making amendments to declarations has changed: if a preliminary analysis of a declaration undertaken by the Bureau within a month from the date of its submission detects mistakes, the servant should correct them within a month (before that, only two days were given to provide updates). The Law also prohibits the publication, in open access, of the declarations in which mistakes were found for the relevant period. Failure to eliminate the mistakes is punishable by a fine of 1,000 GEL (roughly 370 USD).

Additionally, the legal act adopted:

• Abolishes the previous restrictions on the categories of the data the declarant could amend in case mistakes were detected;
• States that the fact of corrections to the declaration is a basis for verifying the declarations of the respective individual.

It is necessary to highlight that the amendments have been criticised by experts. They believe that some provisions such as the access to special categories of personal data by the Anti-Corruption Bureau are not justified. The prohibition to publish the declarations before the corrections are made will hamper transparency of declaration campaigns.