Call centers, cash, and power: Georgia’s hidden political economy — Revised

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Yesterday’s post incorrectly identified a source of information on the Georgia call center scam and its relationship with current members of the government. It also failed to note it was authored by Giorgi Meladze, Associate Professor, Ilia State University School of Law, Visiting Scholar at Freie Universität Berlin.

Georgia’s recent corruption scandals are often described as an internal purge within Georgian Dream. That may be partly true. Former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to large-scale money laundering, following investigations in which officials said they seized more than USD 7 million in cash and valuables from properties linked to former officials. Former State Security Service chief Grigol Liluashvili has also been arrested on bribery charges, including allegations linked to the protection of scam call centers. These cases are real legal developments. But treating them only as corruption prosecutions may miss the larger political story.

In an interview, Givi Targamadze, former MP who chaired the Defense and Security Committee Chairman, offers a different reading. He explains that these arrests and reshuffles should not be seen as a genuine anti-corruption campaign but as symptoms of a deeper struggle over control of illicit finance, security institutions, and political loyalty. According to him, the current turbulence inside Georgian Dream reflects an attempt to reorganize the relationship between state power, criminal networks, and cash-generating schemes, especially Georgia’s now notorious scam call-center industry.

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Call centers, cash, and power: Georgia’s hidden political economy

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GAB welcomes this Guest Post by Giorgi Meladze, Associate Professor, Ilia State University School of Law, Visiting Scholar at Freie Universität Berlin.

Georgia’s recent corruption scandals are often described as an internal purge within Georgian Dream. That may be partly true. Former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to large-scale money laundering, following investigations in which officials said they seized more than USD 7 million in cash and valuables from properties linked to former officials. Former State Security Service chief Grigol Liluashvili has also been arrested on bribery charges, including allegations linked to the protection of scam call centers. These cases are real legal developments. But treating them only as corruption prosecutions may miss the larger political story.

In an interview, Givi Targamadze, former MP and now Director of the Media Center at the Georgian Strategic Analysis Centre, offers a different reading. He explains that these arrests and reshuffles should not be seen as a genuine anti-corruption campaign but as symptoms of a deeper struggle over control of illicit finance, security institutions, and political loyalty. According to him, the current turbulence inside Georgian Dream reflects an attempt to reorganize the relationship between state power, criminal networks, and cash-generating schemes, especially Georgia’s now notorious scam call-center industry.

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The Word Is Not Enough: Testing the Effects of Information Treatments on Perceived Corruption in Ukraine

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GAB is pleased to reprint the article below from Vox Ukraine Idea, an independent analytical platform dedicated to helping Ukraine move into the future. Authors Professor Yuriy Gorodnichenko of the University of California, Berkeley, and Ilona Sologoub, Vox Ukraine’s Scientific Editor, have taken a major step forward in explaining how policymakers can manage the vexed and misunderstood issue of corruption perception measures.

In March 2026, Ukrainians reported that corruption was the second most important problem after the war. 12% of people even put it in the first place. Between  70% and 90% of Ukrainians believe that corruption is a serious problem. At the same time, the incidence of corruption was much lower: in 2025, between 5% (in administrative services) and 32% (in the construction sector) of people found themselves in situations where a bribe was necessary to address their issues. This divergence between perceived and experienced corruption has been persistent: the gap has reached 60-70 percentage points at least since the early 2000s, when the data became available. 

This situation is not unique to Ukraine. In many countries, perceived corruption differs from experienced corruption. Furthermore, when objective measures of corruption are available (Sarullo et al. 2026), they are only weakly correlated with perceptions. One explanation is that surveys measure only petty corruption, whereas perceptions of grand corruption are shaped by the media. Consistent with this explanation, freedom of speech is related to perceived corruption (Gutmann et al. 2020, Costa 2013). This can lead to the integrity paradox: more information about officials prosecuted for corruption can increase popular beliefs about the extent of corruption in a country. 

How can one then defeat the corruption narrative?

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Seychelles Constitutional Court Ruling: A Victory in the Global Fight Against Corruption

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In a landmark decision the Constitutional Court of Seychelles refused to dismiss a corruption case against one of the island nation’s most powerful individuals. The Court’s May 14 opinion rejected prominent businessman Mukesh Valabhji’s effort to dismantle the legal foundations of his prosecution.

The decision puts the lie to fears courts don’t have the spine to back prosecutors seeking to hold the wealthy and politically influential to account.

The case arose from what the Seychelles media dubbed the “missing $50 million” scandal. In 2002, the United Arab Emirates gave the Seychelles government $50 million to fund food imports and help overcome a balance-of-payment deficit. But the funds never reached the public purse. Instead, they were apparently siphoned into a UK bank account and later laundered back into Seychelles where they facilitated the corrupt privatization of state-owned hotels under the Compagnie Seychelloise de Promotion Hôtelière (COSPROH).

Defendant Valabhji was at the time the managing director of the Seychelles Marketing Board (SMB) and executive chairman of COSPROH. The prosecution alleges that Valabhji used the siphoned UAE funds to purchase the very hotels he was tasked with privatizing, effectively acquiring massive private assets using misappropriated public money. The Chief Justice of Seychelles aptly noted that these funds “should have ended in the coffers of the Government… and assist in our national development,” but instead “ended up back up in smoke”.

The Anticorruption Commission of Seychelles (ACCS) arrested Mukesh and his wife, Laura Valabhji, and the investigation quickly expanded, leading to the arrest of several high-profile figures, including Sarah Zarqani Rene, the widow of the late President France Albert Rene, and former senior government ministers. The discovery of a massive cache of weapons—including 72 guns and over 43,000 bullets— prompted additional charges of terrorism and illegal arms possession.

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Contributions Requested for Symposium on Supranational Responses to Corruption: Turning Illicit Gains into Development Outcomes

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The World Bank’s Office of Suspension and Debarment, Sanctions Board Secretariat, Legal Vice Presidency, and Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative together with partners will convene the third Symposium on Supranational Responses to Corruption: Turning Illicit Gains into Development Outcomes in Vienna November 9-10, 2026.

The sponsors seek papers both published and unpublished on the Conference theme. A 300-500 word proposal is due by July 6; successful applicants will be notified by August 6. The deadline for submission is September 30. Details here.

Seychelles’ Case Sets Precedent for Asset Forfeiture

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U.K. Magistrate District Judge Sam Goozée ruled April 22 that the statute of limitations in a civil forfeiture starts to run only when the National Crime Agency learns of the existence of the assets and their illegal origin (here). As a result, he ordered the forfeiture of some $260,000 in the London bank account of Marinette Soumery, a secretary of Mukesh Valabhji, a former Seychelles government official charged with 11 counts of corruption, abuse of authority of office and money laundering (here).

In its forfeiture application, the NCA linked the money to companies and individuals associated with Valabhji and showed he and Soumery had taken elaborate steps to disguise its source. Because of the “highly suspicious” actions taken to hide where the funds came from, their links to Valabhji and associates, and Soumery and Valabhji’s inability to offer a credible explanation for their origin, the court ordered the money forfeited pursuant to the Proceeds of Crime Act, ruling:

there was “cogent and compelling” evidence giving “rise to an irresistible inference that the money in the account could only have been acquired through criminal activity.”

Statute of Limitation Defense

Soumery’s main defense was that however the funds were acquired, the PCA’s six-year statute of limitations, which runs from when “the property was obtained,” had expired in 2007, the date of the last deposit to the account.

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A Bad Bet for Judicial Vetting: Moldova’s Parliament Echoing Polish Politics

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GAB is pleased to cross-post Tilman Hoppe’s April 22 post on judicial vetting policy from Verfassungsblog, a leading source of analysis and informed commentary on public law issues.

In 2022, Moldova launched an ambitious judicial vetting process to fight corruption in the justice system. To that end, it created special commissions tasked with reviewing the integrity of members of judicial self-governing bodies, as well as senior judges and prosecutors. Because such bodies exercise far-reaching powers over judicial careers and discipline, their own independence is crucial.

In Moldova, this independence is now at stake: the ruling majority of Parliament lowered the threshold for appointing members to a simple majority. What may appear to be a technical adjustment points to something more fundamental. Read in light of the ECtHR’s case law on Poland’s contested justice reforms, the new Moldovan threshold risks undermining the Commission’s independence under Article 6 ECHR and, unfortunately with it, the legitimacy of the vetting process itself.

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Legislation to Stop President, VP from Abusing Power to Steal Taxpayer Funds

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On April 15 House and Senate Democrats introduced a bill entitled Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act. Key provisions include:

  • Ban the sitting President/VP from collecting settlement payments from the United States by prohibiting the President, Vice President (VP), their spouses/children, a trust that exists for their benefit, or an entity they own or control, from collecting damages payments from the United States through a settlement or similar agreement with the government the President/VP leads.
  • Pause the filing and processing of a sitting President or VP’s administrative claims by prohibiting federal agencies from processing or fulfilling damages claims brought by the President/VP. Also, prohibit the President/VP from filing administrative claims for damages while in office.
  • Impose guardrails on the President/VP’s federal lawsuits seeking damages by only allowing the President/VP to collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public.
  • Cooling-off period during a former VP’s term as President, meaning if a former President’s VP is elected President, impose the same restrictions on the former President while the former VP is still in the White House.
  • Impose guardrails on claims by former presidents/VPs by allowing former presidents/VPs to collect damages from the U.S. government, but only if:

Link to more detailed explanation and copy of the bill here.

From Diagnostic to Implementation: An Update from Sri Lanka

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Today’s guest post is from Till Hartmann, Governance Specialist with the World Bank, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and positions of the World Bank.

The global anticorruption field has in recent years had more reason to play defense than offense. In several jurisdictions, earlier gains have come under pressure, including through shifts in enforcement priorities and legal constraints on transparency measures. A recent analysis documents a significant reversal in U.S. anticorruption policy. At the same time, earlier momentum on public beneficial ownership transparency in Europe has been curtailed following a 2022 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union—an issue discussed on this blog shortly after the decision.

Against this backdrop, it is worth examining cases where reform momentum—though fragile—has translated into concrete institutional change. Sri Lanka is one such case. An earlier post on this blog described how civil society engagement helped shape the IMF’s 2023 Governance Diagnostic Assessment and the country’s post-crisis reform agenda. The question now is what has followed—and whether it has resulted in tangible progress.

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The Age of Digital National AML Risk Assessments Has Arrived

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GAB welcomes this post by John Chevis, a former member of the Australian Federal Police, former accountant, and current member of the Intelligent Systems for State and Societal Resilience Hub at the University of New South Wales. As John explains below, he and colleagues at South Wales have developed an AI tool for producing National Anti-Money Laundering Risk Assessments. They are looking for those interested either in using it to conduct an NRA or supporting its further development. John and team can be reached at  j.chevis@unsw.edu.au or johnchevis1@gmail.com

Using Artificial Intelligence to comply with the Financial Action Task Force’s directive to conduct a National Risk Assessment – an exercise to “identify, assess, and understand the money laundering and terrorist financing risks” member states face – would seem obvious.

Financial Intelligence Units collect thousands, in larger countries millions, of reports banks and financial institutions submit about possible money laundering by customers. But a database of what is variously termed Suspicious Transaction or Suspicious Matter or Suspicious Activity Reports is by no means the only source for determining the money laundering risks a nation is exposed to. Other databases with millions of potentially useful records include those on cash transactions, company ownership, land titles, court cases, police investigations, and Politically Exposed Persons. There are also media accounts and social media posts. All grist for an NRA mill.

That’s where AI in the form of Large Language Models comes in. An LLM can sort through massive, unstructured datasets to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies, extracting relationships that human analysts with the most advanced mathematic tools might take years to spot — if ever. When brought to bear on data available to an FIU, the resulting analysis will not only highlight vulnerabilities in the nation’s anti-money laundering regime but provide investigative leads for law enforcement. Precisely the objectives of a National Risk Assessment.

Despite the obvious value of turning an LLM loose on FIU data, our team at the University of New South Wales is, to our knowledge, the first to apply AI to producing an effective digital National Risk Assessment. Funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and built for the Papua New Guinea financial intelligence unit, it is called “Neon.” Here is how it works. 

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