On Friday, March 18, at 14:00 pm, the journalistic investigation of Studio Monitor will be presented in the Office of Open Society Georgia Foundation. Investigation concerns the illegal cutting of wood in the Georgian forests. The film also tells how Georgian government terminated the Forest Sector Development Program of World Bank in 2007, one of the components of which was the forest inventarization.
According to the Studio Monitor, at that time Georgian government decided that it was more important to arrange Forest Department offices and conduct trainings than to arrange the woods and it asked the World Bank to redirect this money to this sphere. However, the World Bank terminated the program and Georgian government had to give back 11 million dollars equivalent to GEL to the World Bank.
The investigation reveals that that time head of Forest Department Zviad Cheishvili violated the law on Public Service as he managed the forest issues for three years from different government posts. The Chinese company was given 6 large licenses with his administration. In 2008 Cheishvili became one of the heads of this company.
Also film shows how the official statistics of illegal cutting of woods differs from the expert researches.
Kakheti Information Center