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There is no law that prohibits a person to take money from his/her own bank account and relatively the requirements of the State Audit Office towards Kakhi Kaladze and Bidzina Ivanishvili is illegal – Georgian Dream’s lawyer Sandro Baramidze told Interpresnews in reply to the requirement of the State Audit Office to Kaladze and Ivanishvili to return particularly large amount of money they had taken from their accounts.

“I do not know any law which prohibits a person to take the money from his own account. There are no relevant restrictions in the law. Besides that we cannot use any legal methods to prevent the State Audit Office from turning this illegal requirement into another illegality,” Sandro Baramidze said.

Financial Monitoring Service speaks about removal of money from Kakhi Kaladze and Bidzina Ivanishvili’s bank accounts without indicating particular purpose of this procedure; so the Service recommends them to return the money to the account. The statement of the State Audit Office reads that Bidzina Ivanishvili and Kakhi Kaladze withdrew solid funds from their bank accounts without indicating any particular purpose. Namely, Bidzina Ivanishvili withdrew 5 552 135 lari and Kakhi Kaladze took 3 388 992 lari from their accounts.

“In order to estimate compliance of expenditure of millions of lari by particular persons with the Georgian law, the State Audit Office sent letters to Bidzina Ivanishvili and Kakhi Kaladze and requested them to provide documented information about the activities and expenditures carried out with the money; however they replied us with ungrounded refusal. The main purpose of the State Audit Office is to prevent violations instead imposing sanctions. Due to transparency requirements of political funding both persons, who have publicly declared election goals, were recommended to return solid sums to their own accounts,” the Financial Monitoring Service statement reads.