US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan says that Georgia and the USA have a long friendship, and like old, good friends, they sometimes have disagreements.
This is how the US ambassador answered the question about Lasha Chkhikvadze, the judge who sentenced Nika Gvaramia to prison. Lasha Chkhikvadze said that he was met by a representative of the embassy, after which he was refused to participate in the exchange program in the USA.
Kelly Degnan emphasized that the US is not alone in its concerns about the indictment of Nika Gvaram and its timing.
“We have a long friendship with Georgia, and as old, good friends, sometimes we disagree with each other. We should be able to talk about our disagreements, and we usually do it face-to-face, which is the most effective. Sometimes we speak publicly if the matter is of great concern to us, and that is what we did in this case. We issued a public statement expressing US concerns about the timing and the allegations made. The US is not alone in this issue; the Public Defender, a number of non-governmental organizations and international friends of Georgia had the same concern. It’s not something that happened in secret, it happened in public, and that’s quite normal. It is standard practice. The US has devoted a lot of time to work on Georgia’s justice system, building capacity, improving professionalism, transparency, and independence of the justice system, and this has included numerous exchanges between US experts and Georgian judges, prosecutors and lawyers. These are routine actions that happen all the time. And if someone wants to mischaracterize them or give them more importance than they have, that’s obviously only for their own purposes, ” Kelly Degnan said.
Lasha Chkhikvadze sentenced the founder and head of the main channel, Nika Gvaramia, to 3 years and six months in prison on May 16 – he convicted Gvaramia, even during the directorship of Rustavi 2, of embezzling a large amount of property belonging to the TV company, commercial bribery, making and using fake official documents, as well as in the accusation of legalization of illegal income.
On May 20, a local Georgian news website reported that the judge of the Nika Gvaramia case, Lasha Chkhikvadze, was expelled by the US Embassy from the program, within the framework of which he was supposed to travel to the United States of America.
On July 15, Lasha Chkhikvadze himself confirmed this information and said that “cursing the court has become a trend”.
