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.

This interpretation should be handled carefully. Some claims in the interview remain allegations and require independent investigation. On the other hand, other credible sources offer support. Transparency International Georgia has argued that scam call centers in Georgia have operated at significant scale and that recent prosecutions appear selective, raising concerns that justice is being used according to clan interests rather than as a consistent effort to dismantle organized crime. OCCRP has reported that Georgian prosecutors accuse Liluashvili of taking bribes to protect call centers that targeted victims internationally.

Targamadze recounted in the interview how the call-center system allegedly developed. In his telling, these operations began as a feasible criminal business connected to former Prosecutor General Otar Partskhaladze and the Mikadze brothers’ gang. Partskhaladze is not an ordinary former official. The United States sanctioned him in 2023, stating that he had worked with an FSB officer to influence Georgian society and politics for Russia’s benefit. Mr. Targamadze claims that early call centers were piloted around 2013-14 and later expanded into a more structured system, with protection, hierarchy, cash collection, storage, and distribution.

What makes this account important is not only the alleged criminality. It is the alleged institutional form of the criminality. Mr. Targamadze reveals that the initial structure of the network was horizontal in which people with access, risk appetite, and political cover could enter the business through trusted intermediaries. Discipline was maintained by criminal actors, the Mikadze brothers, while state-linked figures allegedly provided protection and predictability. If accurate, this would suggest not simply corruption within the state, but the emergence of a political-criminal market operating through the state.

That distinction matters for anti-corruption policy. Conventional anti-corruption reform assumes that the state has an interest in identifying corruption, strengthening institutions, and punishing abuse. State capture is different. In captured systems, formal institutions may still exist, but they are selectively activated. Law enforcement moves when it serves internal discipline, revenge, or redistribution of control. It does not when accountability threatens the system itself. This is why selective arrests can look like progress while actually confirming the depth of capture.

The Georgian government’s approach to anti-corruption institutions reinforces this concern. Georgia created its Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2022 as part of its EU-related reform process, but in November 2025 the authorities announced plans to abolish it and transfer its functions to the State Audit Office. Reuters reported that more than 50 Georgian NGOs had already accused the Bureau of failing in its mandate and being used to persecute independent civil society organizations. At the same time, the broader legal environment has become more hostile to NGOs and independent media. As Leigh Gibson, researcher for UK House of Commons Library notes, Georgia’s newer foreign influence law requires detailed disclosure to the Anti-Corruption Bureau and introduces criminal penalties for non-registration, raising concerns that such tools may target civil society and government critics. It should be noted that former chief of anti-corruption bureau Razhden Kuprahvili is currently a defense attorney for former deputy chief of State Security Service Levan Akhobadze, who is accused of bribery.

This is why the call-center scandal cannot be separated from democratic backsliding. The same state that claims to fight corruption has weakened, politicized, or repurposed anti-corruption mechanisms. The same ruling network that presents prosecutions as legal accountability has presided over a political environment in which opposition figures, protesters, NGOs, and independent media face growing pressure. Joining other critics, the OSCE has described Georgia as experiencing a sharp democratic decline.

The interview goes further and argues that call centers have become a key source of cash for Bidzina Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream. Mr. Targamadze claims that illicit revenues help fund party operations, media, loyalty networks, and the broader survival machinery of the ruling system. Since IMEDI TV was sanctioned, the main source of funding for the channel has been cash. The same applies to party operations. The call-centers gained so much importance that Ivanishvili entrusted this business to his son Bera Ivanishvili and his friends. Later he moved his son to construction business as family started to worry that he was getting too close to criminals.

This specific claim requires investigation. But the broader concern is plausible enough to demand international attention: when transnational fraud generates large cash flows, and when those cash flows allegedly intersect with political power, domestic prosecution is unlikely to be sufficient.

This is especially true because the victims are not only Georgian. Transparency International Georgia has noted that scam call centers operating from Georgia have caused serious financial damage to citizens of EU member states, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The Guardian, drawing on leaked data, reported in 2025 that one Tbilisi-based operation had defrauded more than 6,000 people of about GBP 27 million through fake investment schemes. If Georgian territory, companies, banks, exchange offices, or political protectors are part of such networks, this becomes a transnational enforcement question, not a domestic scandal.

The interview with Mr. Targamadze also raises the question of Russian influence. It is verified that the United States sanctioned Partskhaladze for alleged cooperation with the FSB. It is also documented that Georgian political life has become increasingly shaped by anti-Western rhetoric and legislation resembling Russian authoritarian tools.

Maia Otarashvili and Robert Hamilton warned in 2024 that Georgia faced a choice between rule of law and rule by law, and that using law to punish political enemies would place Georgia on the Russian path. The developments showed that the warning was incomplete. The problem is not only rule by law but also rule through illicit finance and criminal structures.

Targamadze describes how security police officers are reaching out to private security firms and recruiting personnel for the protection of criminals involved in supervision of the call center network. Civil society can resist authoritarian laws. It can document abuses, defend prisoners, monitor elections, and keep international attention alive. But civil society cannot, by itself, dismantle a political economy built on transnational crime, security-service protection, cash flows, and foreign influence. If such a structure exists, then the usual response, statements of concern, and support to NGOs, is insufficient.

Instead, stricter measures should be employed. First, Western law enforcement agencies should treat Georgia-linked call-center fraud as a transnational organized crime priority. The victims, financial channels, digital infrastructure, and laundering mechanisms cross borders. Second, sanctions should target not only officials responsible for repression, but also financial intermediaries, companies, criminal brokers, and political protectors who enable illicit flows. The United States has already sanctioned Bidzina Ivanishvili for undermining Georgia’s democratic and Euro-Atlantic future for Russia’s benefit. But sanctions must be followed by financial investigation, asset tracing, and coordinated enforcement.

Third, international actors should not mistake internal purges for accountability. Garibashvili’s imprisonment and Liluashvili’s arrest are significant. But if prosecutions occur only when former insiders lose protection, then the justice system is not fighting corruption; it is helping reorganize power. The same applies to any investigation that exposes one faction while leaving the wider architecture untouched.

Finally, the EU and the United States need to recognize the strategic dimension. Georgia is not only experiencing democratic decline. It may be moving toward a cartelized form of governance in which national institutions are subordinated to private political survival, illicit revenue, and dynastic continuity. The interview’s strongest warning is that the system is becoming transferable, not merely authoritarian, but inheritable.

That is why the call-center scandal matters. It is not a side story about cyber fraud. It is a test of whether Georgia’s crisis is still understood as a reversible democratic setback, or whether it has become something more dangerous: a state capture model sustained by criminal money, selective justice, and geopolitical drift. If Western governments want to maintain meaningful influence in Georgia and wider Caucasus, the argument for sanctions, investigation, and financial disruption is already there. The question is whether they are willing to act before the system becomes fully consolidated.